Golar LNG Limited Stock

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Golar LNG Limited Second Quarter 2026 Webcast and Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded.

I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Karl Fredrik Staubo, CEO.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, and welcome to Golar LNG's Q2 2026 Earnings Results Presentation. My name is Karl Fredrik Staubo, I'm the CEO of Golar, and I'm accompanied today by our CFO, Eduardo Maranhao, to present this quarter's results.

Before we get into the presentation, please note the forward-looking statements on Slide 2. Starting on Slide 3, we start with an exciting announcement. Overnight, we signed our fourth FLNG unit, which is another Mark II FLNG to be constructed at CIMC Raffles Shipyard in China. That's the same shipyard already constructing our existing Mark II FLNG on order.

The fourth FLNG order will deliver within 2029 and be the earliest available FLNG capacity globally. The order has been placed on the back of strong interest from prospective charters as well as Golar's stated policy of adding additional FLNG capacity once the existing fleet has secured long-term charter commitments.

Across Hilli, Gimi and the Mark II under construction, now named the FLNG Esperanza, Golar has a total EBITDA backlog of $17 billion before commodity upside and before a charter on the fourth FLNG unit.

During the quarter, Hilli completed her 8-year contract for Perenco offshore Cameroon with 100% economic uptime for the life of the contract. Gimi overproduced 15% versus contractual volume and the FLNG Esperanza remains on time and on budget.

As part of the firm order for our fourth FLNG, we have also secured an option for an incremental Mark II FLNG with CIMC Raffles, i.e., an option unit, and today, we also announced a letter of intent with Seatrium Shipyard in Singapore for further incremental growth units utilizing our Mark I or Mark II design. We will provide further color on our growth ambitions later in the presentation.

Our liquidity stands at approximately $1.5 billion, inclusive of the $600 million revolving credit facility secured during Q2.

Turning to Slide 4, we highlight our long-term charter contracts with Hilli, Gimi and Esperanza contracted through 2045 and with a total EBITDA backlog of $17 billion before commodity upside and inflationary adjustments. With our fourth FLNG order, we see potential to meaningfully increase our earnings capacity, and we'll now elaborate on that on Slide 5.

Today's announced order marks a 41% increase in Golar controlled liquefaction capacity, increasing our total fleet capacity from 8.6 million tonnes to more than 12 million tonnes on a fully delivered basis.

Assuming that we can achieve contractual terms in line with those achieved for Esperanza last year, we see potential for a 50% increase in our earnings capacity. Our fourth unit is also expected to bring diversification of our earnings backlog, both with regards to charter counterparts as well as geographical exposure.

Today's announced order will also be the world's earliest available liquefaction capacity, at least 1 to 2 years ahead of any alternatives. And this again will drive charter interest in the unit. The incremental options, both on CIMC and through the LOI with Seatrium create a replicable model and a capacity to meet some of the demand we see for FLNG deployments.

On Slide 6, we lay out the overview of the FLNG industry by owner. With our fourth order, we now regained the position as the market-leading owner of FLNG capacity with number of units at par with ENI, but higher in terms of controlled liquefaction capacity. We expect to see another 1 to 3 FLNG orders from the existing owners on this page within the next 6 to 12 months further building on our thesis that the FLNG market will see similar development to that of the FPSO industry, which started in 1985 and now has grown to more than 250 units globally. Golar maintains the position as the only proven provider of FLNG as a service.

Turning to Slide 7. We have laid out the same overview of the FLNG units globally, but here divided by the shipyard of construction. As you can clearly see from the slide, Samsung is the market leader for delivery of FLNGs.

Wison shipyard in China has also built 3 newbuilds and continue to actively market newbuild FLNGs, while Hanwha Ocean delivered 1 unit in 2016 and don't have near-term capacity to add additional units. 2 shipyards on the far right, both Seatrium and CIMC have only ever built units for Golar and only done conversions. The way we see the market today, we do not expect other players actively pursuing conversion candidates. Hence, they are focused on Samsung or Wison.

Based on conversations with both shipyards, we believe Samsung is at the very earliest able to deliver incremental capacity sometime in 2031. We do expect Wison to be in prime position to win 2 large FLNG units in the relatively near future, and then they will also be spoken for, for well into the 2030s.

Hence, the way we see the market right now, we believe the only incremental capacity that can be added with relatively near-term delivery is Golar conversions at Seatrium and CIMC. In addition to yard capacity, we see significant pressure on critical long lead equipment. Equipment like turbines, dual fuel engine, steam generators and cold boxes see significant competition from other industries, including AI data centers, shipbuilding and the aircraft industry.

Hence, further pressure on these long leads further drives lead times for incremental orders. Therefore, we believe today's announcements, both of a firm order #4 and option for another unit at CIMC as well as an LOI with Seatrium secures Golar with a growth trajectory to capture market opportunities ahead of competition. We will remain with our policy of only having one open vessel at the time.

So as soon as we lock in the contract for #4, we're then likely to proceed at #5, but we have no ambition to overextend. Again, this is furthermore in line with our announced strategy and also strategic review that we are looking at alternatives to accelerate our FLNG growth, and this speaks to that statement.

Turning to Slide 8 and an overview of the LNG industry and what's going on in the market as we see it. The industry is set to grow around 40% between 2026 and 2031. As stated on our Q1 call, the 2 largest exporters in the world, U.S. and Qatar, are at the same time expected to increase their market share from 40% to 53% of global supply. Hence, as much as we see a growing market, we see very significant increase in supply concentration.

Turning to the middle graph, geopolitical events make such concentration with increasing uncertainty for offtakers. The world's second largest exporter of LNG, Qatar, was directly hit in military action during Middle East events and the Ras Laffan liquefaction plant has estimates that they will be out by around 17 million tonnes out of a total capacity of 88 million for at least 3 to 5 years.

We, therefore, see a need for the global LNG market to further diversify its supply. This is where we think FLNG will play a vital role. And on the graph on the far right, you can see the location of FLNG projects globally. 6 of today's exporters would not have been exporters if it weren't for FLNG technology.

Where Golar operates, we represent the only export facility. That's true for Mauritania, Senegal, it will be true for Argentina, and it was true for Cameroon before we left the country. Significant proven gas reserves remain stranded, which creates further opportunities for FLNG-led LNG supply diversification.

Turning to Q2 and recent highlights and developments. As stated during the quarter, Gimi delivered 15% above its contractual day rate with a 41st cargo delivered. Hilli ended its 8-year contract in Cameroon with 100% economic uptime since contract startup and 156 cargoes delivered over the 8 years.

The unit is now in transit to Singapore for modifications ahead of its 20-year contract in Argentina. SESA officially named the Mark II under construction, the FLNG Esperanza. We secured a $600 million revolving credit facility. We signed the fourth FLNG order and through the EPC for #4 and the LOI with Seatrium, we made a pathway to increase the fleet to over 7 units.

Turning to Slide 11 with a focus on Hilli. On July 26, Golar delivered its final cargo under our contract with Perenco Offshore Cameroon. We're extremely proud to see the unit have 100% economic uptime since start-up. We're further pleased to see that the redeployment progress as planned. We exited the country and are in transit according to schedule.

Once the modification work has completed, we will sail to Argentina, where we will start a contract in the second half of next year, where we will generate $285 million of annual EBITDA before further commodity upside.

On Slide 12, we would like to extend our gratitude and thankfulness to our partners, SNH and Perenco for solid cooperation over 8 years in Cameroon. In addition to LNG export, the project has created meaningful value to the local economy and people.

Golar's operations employed more than 100 Cameroonians or more than 40% local content on board the unit. In addition to significant scholarship and training courses, we have spent $80 million in local procurement and generated more than $1.5 billion in cash earnings to Cameroonian state interests.

We've also voluntarily invested in critical infrastructure in country such as water holes, streetlights, school renovations, new sports centers, et cetera. We're motivated to work together again on potential gas monetization in Cameroon and hope to be back in the near future.

Turning to Slide 13 and the Gimi. Gimi continues to produce above contractual levels. During the quarter, we produced 15% above the contracted capacity. That's despite the fact that we are coming into summer months and liquefaction plants are sensitive to both ambient and water temperature. Hence, we're extremely pleased with this performance. We do expect to see continued impact of high temperatures during Q3 before we see improved performance when we enter the winter months. Over the year, we do expect the unit to produce meaningfully above the contractual capacity.

Turning to FLNG 3, the Esperanza project remains on schedule and on budget. We're now 74% complete on the conversion progress with more than 15 million manhours completed without lost time incidents. The unit remains on track for sail away by year-end 2027 and to start operations in Argentina in the second half of '28. Today, we've spent around $1.3 billion in cash equity into the conversion project out of a total budget of $2.2 billion.

On Slide 15, we're also progressing the required infrastructure in Argentina. SESA, our contract counterpart in which Golar is a 10% shareholder, are now progressing critical infrastructure, including pipeline connections required for the start-up, warehouse for operations support, supply both feeder vessels and crew vessels, and we're also marketing the LNG offtake. The first 2 million tonnes of the total 6 has been sold to securing energy for Europe. And we have now seen multiple offtakers bidding for the next 4 million tonnes, and we expect more offtake to conclude before year-end.

Turning to Slide 16. We have now confirmed our final investment decision for our fourth FLNG unit. The unit will be similar to the Esperanza currently under construction. The total CapEx budget has increased on the back of inflationary pressure for -- in particular, for long-lead equipment globally. And we have a CapEx budget now of around $2.45 billion versus around $2.2 billion for the Esperanza.

Even with this approximate 10% increase in cost, we see this as highly competitive, both compared to an FLNG newbuild and certainly in relation to the cost inflation observed on other offshore and shipping assets globally in the course of the last 2 years, which have grown meaningfully more than 10%.

We expect significant synergies to be realized from building a repeat design and from having 2 units with overlapping construction at the same shipyard. We have secured a donor vessel for the conversion. And we are now in advanced discussions for long-term employment for the unit. We do not expect to add additional units until we have clear visibility on the long-term charter for the unit now ordered.

However, once we do, we turn to Slide 17, and we have a very clear path as to how we may grow beyond unit #4. Firstly, we -- the order we placed overnight includes an option for a third Mark II FLNG at CIMC Raffles in Yantai, China.

As earlier stated, we've also signed an LOI with Seatrium. Seatrium is the shipyard that constructed both the Hilli and Gimi and also the shipyard that will conduct the Hilli modification work this year and next year. That LOI reserves slot reservations for either a Mark I or a Mark II design FLNG.

In addition to the shipyard capacity, we have secured options for incremental long lead equipment. We have identified and are working to secure additional donor vessels, and we're certainly advancing charter discussions for long-term employment with multiple counterparts. With the agreement signed today, Golar is laying out the groundwork for accelerated FLNG growth in the years to come.

I'll now hand the call over to Eduardo to take us through group results.

Thank you, Karl, and good morning, everyone.

Moving to Slide 19. Q2 was another strong quarter for Golar with continued operational performance across our FLNG fleet and a meaningful increase in EBITDA. Total operating revenue was $130 million in the quarter, with FLNG Gimi continuing to perform above contractual levels, delivering earnings approximately 15% above contracted base rate during Q2. We also completed the final legacy O&M contract relating to the FSRU Italis LNG, further completing our transition into a pure-play FLNG infrastructure company.

EBITDA increased approximately 20% quarter-on-quarter to $127 million compared to $106 million in Q1, primarily driven by higher commodity-linked earnings from Hilli. Hilli generated $37 million of commodity-linked earnings during the quarter compared to $10 million in Q1, demonstrating once again the meaningful commodity upside embedded within our contracted earnings base.

Net income was $56 million in the quarter, bringing year-to-date net income to $158 million. And consistent with our capital allocation framework, we have declared another quarterly dividend of $0.25 per share in Q2.

Now moving to Slide 20. Our balance sheet continues to provide substantial flexibility to fund the next phase of FLNG growth. At quarter end, total cash stood at approximately $900 million and net interest-bearing debt was approximately $1.8 billion.

In July, we further strengthened our liquidity position by closing a new $600 million revolving credit facility, which currently remains undrawn. Including the RCF, we have approximately $1.5 billion of available liquidity.

At the same time, we have now equity funded approximately $1.3 billion of the FLNG Esperanza conversion, leaving significant embedded financing capacity across our asset base. As illustrated on the right, optimizing the financing of Hilli and locking long-term financing for Esperanza could release approximately $2.3 billion of incremental liquidity.

Discussions on both transactions are advancing. Together with our existing liquidity, operating cash flows and potential proceeds from asset level financing, that will provide substantial capacity to fund FLNG #4, while preserving balance sheet flexibility for further growth, as explained by Karl. The timing in terms of FLNG #4 asset level financing will ultimately be aligned with its long-term charter and our broader FLNG growth opportunities.

Now moving to Slide 21. I would like now to spend a moment on this slide here to talk about the commodity-linked component of our earnings, which has become increasingly relevant given the strengthening LNG price environment.

Hilli provides a useful demonstration of the value of this structure. Over its 8-year contract in Cameroon, Hilli generated over $650 million of commodity-linked earnings before all the hedging proceeds, which we achieved during that period.

Our contracts in Argentina also give us meaningful upside participation. Under the Hilli and Esperanza charters, Golar receives a commodity-linked fee equivalent to 25% of FOB prices above $8 per million BTU, while our 10% ownership in SESA provides additional commodity exposure.

As we previously highlighted, every $1 per million BTU above $8 can generate up to approximately $100 million of incremental annual earnings to Golar. Importantly, LNG offtake indices and forward prices have strengthened materially since early this year.

Based on current and forward pricing, we estimate that this movement could increase the value of our commodity exposure by up to $500 million per year during the first 3 years of SESA operations. While forward market liquidity naturally reduces further out in the curve, the important point here is that this upside sits on top of our long-term contracted earnings base.

If we now turn to Slide 22. Now this slide brings the 2 key components of our model, a highly visible contracted earnings base and a significant commodity-linked upside. With Gimi, Hilli and Esperanza fully operational, we expect an annual run rate EBITDA of approximately $800 million by 2028 before commodity upside and inflation adjustments.

If FLNG #4 is contracted on terms broadly comparable to Esperanza, annual EBITDA has the potential to increase by approximately 50% to more than $1.2 billion by 2030. And importantly, that remains the base contracted earnings.

On top of that, our Hilli, Esperanza and SESA exposure provides meaningful participation in LNG prices. At $8 per million BTU, as you see on the graph, we would expect annual EBITDA of more than $1.2 billion. At $10, this increases to $1.4 billion, while at $15, which is the current forward prices for next year, that would imply approximately $1.9 billion in EBITDA to Golar.

And to illustrate the embedded upside potential, if we apply the LNG pricing that we saw in 2022, we would see potential annual EBITDA approaching $4 billion. The key takeaway is that we have a highly visible contracted earnings base capable of exceeding $1.2 billion annually with our FLNG #4, together with substantial additional upside if LNG markets remain strong.

Now turning to Slide 23. One of the key attractions of FLNG is that it provides buyers with geographically diversified LNG supply while offering very compelling economics to reserve owners. The illustration on the left shows the economics for a 3.5 MTPA Mark II FLNG based on current forward LNG prices.

Including upstream feedstock gas, the cost of liquefaction, shipping and regas, we estimate an all-in delivered LNG cost of under $8 per million BTU. If you compare that to a 1-year forward LNG price of approximately $15 per million BTU, this leaves a very significant margin for the charter. At approximately 90% utilization, a 3.5 MTPA FLNG would deliver around 50 cargoes per year.

On these assumptions, that translates into approximately $1.3 billion of annual operating margin for the charter or around $25 million per cargo. Importantly, these economics come together with the strategic benefits of FLNG, shorter time to market, access to geographically diversified gas resources and reduce the dependence on a limited number of large onshore LNG supply locations. This combination of attractive economics and supply diversification provides a compelling proposition for prospective FLNG charters.

So in summary, Q2 was another strong quarter for us. We continue to deliver operationally. Our contracted earnings base provides significant long-term visibility, commodity exposure offers substantial upside and our balance sheet provides the capacity to fund the next phase of FLNG growth. With attractive economics supporting demand for additional units, we believe we are extremely well positioned for the opportunities ahead.

So with that, I'll hand the call back to you, Karl.

Thank you, Eduardo.

Turning to Slide 25 to summarize. Golar is the leading global FLNG player controlling a fleet of 12.1 million tonnes per annum. Through our operations to date, we've delivered 100% economic uptime and delivered 197 LNG cargoes. Our backlog stands at $17 billion before commodity upside and inflationary adjustments and with further upside in a potential charter for our fourth FLNG unit announced today.

Assuming we can fix that unit in line with our last fixture last year, we have a potential to grow our annual earnings by 50% or to north of $1.2 billion by 2030 before commodity upside and inflationary adjustments. We see that FLNG is an increasingly relevant source of global energy security and supply diversification.

We are strategically positioned for growth. And with the announcements today, both with CIMC and Seatrium, we're well positioned to capture the market opportunity significantly ahead of any incremental competition from alternative suppliers.

We maintain a disciplined capital allocation focused on shareholder returns, and we still have capacity under our share buyback program. We continue our quarterly dividend with significant capacity for further growth as the fleet deliver to their long-term contracts.

With that, I'd like to hand the call over to the operator for any questions.

[Operator Instructions] And the question comes from the line of John Mackay from Goldman Sachs.

Congrats on the fourth vessel announcement. I wanted to pick up on a couple of things you've been talking about. Maybe can you just walk us through the path to commercializing that vessel and signing a customer. And you talked about maybe framing up the economics on the last vessel, but maybe broadly talk about target return profiles in this context.

John, if you follow the sequencing of both our previous speculative orders and our announcements year-to-date, we have been focused on evolving the charter opportunities to narrow down the design. We were contemplating either Mark I or Mark II. But with the visibility we now have, we see the best value proposition to be a Mark II order, which is why we ordered that one.

We expect then to further narrow down the charter opportunities and to secure a long-term charter for the unit where we maintain sort of a 20-year duration plus/minus. And we remain with our guidance in the 5 to 6x CapEx to EBITDA sort of range.

And just to clarify, that -- how should we think about kind of the remaining time line and milestones for us to watch? For signing the customer?

There are no standard process for fixing an FLNG because the only ones who've ever done them as a service is Golar, and they've all been quite different, to be honest. But the typical first step is a signing of either a term sheet or a framework agreement that sets out the key commercials. Sometimes it's binding, sometimes it's not, but it is certainly a milestone, if that's achieved.

From there on, we will then evolve the term sheet or framework agreement into a full contract. And then the third step is typically then to lift all CPs thereafter, which are typically regulatory, both in terms of export license and the environmental license required. And in certain countries, which are not yet LNG exporters, you also need clarification on the tax regime. So 3, call it, key steps, signing of term sheet, signing of definitive contracts and lastly, lifting of CPs.

And second question for me, Karl, you mentioned the potential for 7 vessels. I understand there's a couple of moving pieces here and the time line, like you said, can move around. But maybe in a, let's say, a blue sky scenario, how would we think about kind of pace of deployments and being able to get to that fleet of 7.

So first off, it's on the yard capacity side. We have ordered unit #4 today. We have an option to do unit. We will not commit to that being CIMC or Seatrium in that order. But for simplicity, unit #5 then with a fixed option at CIMC and Unit #6 and 7 at Seatrium, but it may not be that exact sequence. The fifth could be Seatrium and the sixth could be CIMC, if you understand. That's what we've already locked in today with the contract signed at CIMC and the LOI with Seatrium.

In terms of sequencing, we remain with our very clearly stated policy that we are not going to have more than one open FLNG at the time. Hence, we're not considering ordering unit #5 until we have clear visibility for a long-term contract on the fourth unit. Once that is locked in, we will then proceed with the fifth, and we'll continue to replicate that model as we grow. Once we secure long-term contracts, we will then attach asset level financing to the then derisked FLNG and recycle that capital into the consequent unit.

And the question comes from the line of Alexander Bidwell from Webber Research & Advisory.

So with the LOI with Seatrium covering either a Mark I or Mark II and then you've got the option for a third Mark II at CIMC. Can you talk us through how you're thinking about shipyard selection for your next unit? Is there -- are there any differences between going with one or the other?

So we have spent -- we've obviously built 2 units with Seatrium in the past, both of them being Mark I. And we are in process of building a Mark II with CIMC. Given that, that unit is now 74% progress, we feel comfortable ordering the second unit there.

So when it comes to the next unit and the yard selection, we are clearly comfortable with both shipyards. So it will come down to price, payment terms and delivery. And to the extent that is relevant, there may be a charter preference for one yard over the other. But in general, it has to do with the price payment terms and delivery. That's the key decision maker. And then if it's Mark I, it's very likely to be Seatrium anyway.

And then just for a quick follow-up. Can you talk us through the, I guess, the delta in budget between the FLNG Esperanza and the second Mark II conversion? I think it's $2.2 billion versus $2.45 billion.

Yes. So as we said, that's around a 10% increase. That's mainly driven by very significant cost inflation on long lead equipment and also impacted by steel prices and currency fluctuations. But if you look at some of the long leads typically have 40% to 60% cost inflation. So the fact that the overall unit is, call it, only up with 10%, obviously, it's still meaningful, but we think that is a testimony to the very significant work that we've done over the course of this year, both with regards to long lead items and negotiating with the shipyards. I would also like to highlight that when we say that this is the price, that's the all-in price. meaning it includes the EPC with the shipyard. It includes crew training, bunkering and transport from yard site to contract sites and also the mooring system that we anticipate using. So it's delivered cost to site.

And the question comes from the line of Sherif Elmaghrabi from BTIG.

First, very simply, what drove the decision to order a Mark II? Is that indicative of where conversations with charters have progressed? Because a quarter ago, you guys talked about pretty big range in terms of looking back in capacity.

You broke up a bit at the end there, but I think we got the question. So the primary reason for going with that unit is that's where we see the strongest charter engagement for relatively near-term employment of the unit. It's also where we see the most attractive CapEx per tonne and OpEx per MMBtu. I think both the economics to the client and the charter interest and the gas reserves in question at the moment, it's the most actively demanded unit we have, and therefore, we felt comfortable doing that also on the back of the solid performance by the shipyard in constructing the Esperanza, which is now 74% complete.

And then for the 2 to 3 options that you hold, can you tell us -- and I apologize if I missed this, but can you tell us when do these additional options expire and kind of the lead time for those units for when they would hit the water would be helpful.

We don't want to go into details as to exactly when they expire because commercially, that's a little bit sensitive, and we think we can drive better value with holding that for ourselves for now. In terms of delivery, you're talking around 38 to 40 months, subject to which shipyard and what the time.

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

Just looking at the next opportunities here, Argentina was unique in the sense that had 2 FLNG units in one country. Are there any commercial opportunities here as you've FID-ed the fourth one that a fifth vessel could go to the same local and kind of a 2-for-1 deal? Or are the commercial opportunities you're looking at more geographically dispersed?

Both. There are places where you can do both, and there are people that only want one. But I think to give you an example, Argentina took 2. But Argentina, if you look at the project with YPF, ENI and XOG, they're also talking about adding 2 units there, both of them 6 million tonnes. So that's another 12. So obviously, there's meaningful capacity to significantly boost Argentina.

You have other countries like Mozambique, which are now taking 2 units from ENI. And there are several other countries like that where there's room to put multiple units. So the answer is, yes, we can definitely look at multiple deployments in certain geographies. But for us, it tends to be just to start with one and then build on that. But with the option package we now have, we can talk to both.

And just as a follow-up. So now that FID has been announced on the fourth unit and a clear pathway here for additional units, can you contextualize this around the strategic review that's still ongoing? And when do you expect that process to be concluded? And any updates there?

As we stated in the announcement on the strategic review, the rationale for the strategic review was twofold. One, Board and management believes there's a value discrepancy between public market pricing and potential other parties valuation of the existing business. And the second and at least equally important rationale was to accelerate FLNG growth on the back of the market development that we see.

I think today's announcements very clearly point out what we want to achieve in terms of FLNG market acceleration. When it comes to the strategic review, you are right that, that is ongoing. And as we've stated in the strategic review press release, we will not give any comments on the review itself, neither the outcome nor the timing until we have material information to share or the Board has decided to call it off. So we expect that to revert to the market with that in due course. But in the interim, we're not giving any specific comments to it.

Got it. If I could ask one follow-up question. Just to reiterate the guidance, the current guidance around Hilli and it going to the yard, is it the same time line, same budget, CapEx budget for the refurb and redeployment?

I'm not sure if I understood it. So the refurb budget is around $350 million from the day we depart Cameroon until the day we arrive in Argentina and well into commission in Argentina.

And the question comes from the line of Jostein Aschjem from Clarksons.

So I was just wondering about the schedule for the CapEx of the new FLNG unit. Do you aim to take delivery of the unit by 2029? And then how should we think about kind of the sequence and timing of the CapEx related to that unit?

Sorry, the CapEx on #4?

Yes.

So the CapEx on #4 is meaningfully improved from the Esperanza. So that's been part of negotiating the yard contract. And to be fair, it is quite offsetting on the 10% cost increase that we have meaningfully lower capital outlays, in particular, in the first 2 years of the construction period, which is the same period of time until the Esperanza is fully operational.

So the CapEx curve have been negotiated substantially lower than that of the Esperanza, but it's still a pay-as-you-go payment terms and not sort of a shipyard fixed installment type of -- or for traditional commercial ships.

If I may, a follow-up on the optional units that you have secured or the options that you have, will you start ordering long lead items for those? And how far will you be kind of willing to commit to, for example, long lead items on those units for the next couple of years?

So the way it works is when we place the firm orders for unit #4, as part of that firm order, we then negotiated packages for a potential unit #5 for the majority of them at absolutely no incremental cost and some of them at a very, very low incremental cost in total for all of them, less than $1 million. That obviously has a time constraint.

In many cases, that time constraint can be extended. But if you do go and extend the time constraint, you're likely to then get a later delivery slot because there's very significant pressure on these long lead items. But we're pleased to have obtained the options that we have obtained at very limited to no cost incremental to that of the order itself.

[Operator Instructions] And the question comes from the line of Sunil Sibal from Seaport Global.

So I think you touched upon your potential counterparties for the fourth vessel. I was curious how do you think about geographical as well as credit preferences for the fourth counterparty? Is there something specific we should be looking for as far as especially the credit quality of your fourth counterparty is concerned?

It's a good question and to answer it is slightly different. Every time we have these calls, we get all of the same questions from investment banks and investors. But this is an open call. So potential charters, shipyards, equipment suppliers and many other people are listening to this call. So we weigh our words carefully.

We are in advanced charter discussions in several different geographies. Some of them are to NOCs, some of them are to independents and some of them are to IOCs. Subject to the credit quality of the counterpart, they are likely to demand slightly different contract structures, but that also then comes with at least different perceived risk, although I believe we have been very successful at structuring around such risks in the past.

At the end of the day, an FLNG is paid by the client who buys the offtake gas. And the good thing with LNG is that there are no bad credit buyers. There are typically countries, very big industrial groups or the world's largest traders that are offtakers there. So subject to where you operate, the contractual protections are the most important, but we do recognize that financeability increases, if we charter to sort of IOCs.

But then again, as we've previously explained, they are less likely to share commodity upside and so forth. So at the end of the day, for us, it's a trade-off. What we look to are economic returns and, of course, equity returns. And then leverage plays a part of that. But at the end of the day, we believe that the market position with the lowest CapEx per tonne in the industry, the best operational performance and the earliest delivery in a world with increasing geopolitical pressure for supply certainty puts us in a very unique position to drive value to Golar and its stakeholders.

And then one clarification. I know with your previous projections for the 3 vessel case, I think you're ultimately looking at the 3 to 3.5x kind of a leverage once all the 3 units are up and running. Now that you're looking at the fourth one, should we be thinking about ultimate desired leverage in the same range? Or do you think you could be a little bit more even aggressive in that range now that you're kind of diversifying the fleet and all that?

What we've proven to -- you are right that on a net debt-to-EBITDA ratio, that's where we are at the moment. As Eduardo explained, there's significant capacity to free up a few billion dollars of liquidity if we relever the Hilli and add asset level financing on the Esperanza. We've proven in the past with the financing of Gimi in November, December last year that subject to contract counterpart and contract structure, we have done asset level financing at 5.5x.

We don't want to overextend the balance sheet because we want capacity to continue to add attractive growth projects. But as we lock in more EBITDA backlog, we expect the ratio to not meaningfully change.

Dear speakers, there are no further questions for today. I would now like to hand the conference over to the management team for any closing remarks.

Thank you all for dialing in today. We are very excited with today's announcement and developments, and we look forward to speak to you again on the future development of the company as we continue to grow within the FLNG space. We wish you all a great day and hope to speak soon. Thank you.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now all disconnect. Have a nice day.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Golar LNG Limited First Quarter 2026 Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded.

I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Karl Fredrik Staubo, CEO. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and good morning from our headquarters in Bermuda. Welcome to Golar's Q1 2026 Earnings Results Presentation. My name is Karl Fredrik Staubo, I'm the CEO of Golar and I'm accompanied today by our CFO, Eduardo Maranhao. Before we get into the presentation, please note the forward-looking statements on Slide 2. We'll start on Slide 3 and an overview of Golar today.

Q1 was a record quarter for LNG production for Golar. Chile continued its 100% economic uptime and Gimi produced 19% above the committed contractual capacity. The Mark II FLNG remains on budget and scheduled for delivery by year-end. Geopolitical risks during the quarter highlights the vulnerability of global energy markets and the need for energy diversification and security. This has driven strong development of our commercial pipeline for incremental FLNG units, but we're now expecting to order our fourth FLNG unit within this area. As you can see on the bottom part of the slide, this is our three growth designs available for the next units. During the quarter, we also announced that we have launched a strategic review to explore options to further accelerate our FLNG growth ambitions and to maximize shareholder returns.

Turning to Slide 4. We will share some views on how we see the energy market development and the increasing demand for Golar's FLNG offering as the only proven service provider of FLNG. On Slide 4, we highlight the three key value drivers for Golar. Starting on the left, the NPV of our $17 billion base backlog is increasing every day, we get closer to all 3 units in operation. Gimi commenced its 20-year charter in June last year. Hilli will end her current charter in Cameroon in July, and then go via Singapore for vessel upgrades before starting her 20-year charter in Argentina in the summer of next year. The Mark II remains on schedule for delivery by year-end '27 and is expected to start per 20-year charter in the summer of '28.

Our second value driver in the middle of the slide is the value of the attractive commodity upside embedded in our Argentina contracts. The significant increase in LNG price indices during Q1 increased the value of our commodities exposure by approximately $200 million to $500 million per year in the first 3 years of CESA operations. Once the remaining 4 million tons of OpEx is secured, this commodity-linked earnings should be locked in through hedging activities. Beyond 2030, there isn't yet an efficient forward market, but recent events speaks to significant upside potential in our commodity exposures in several years to come.

Lastly, our third pillar of value creation is Golar's position as the only proven service provider of FLNG as a service. This enables us to open new markets to LNG exports and with our proven market-leading CapEx per ton, operational track record and retainage performance, FLNGs represents a compelling value proposition for gas monetization. On the back of the strong commercial development in the quarter, we are now focused on ordering our fourth FLNG within 2026.

Turning to Slide 5, which provides an overview of our EBITDA backlog. As stated, all FLNGs has 20-year charters. The backlog stands at $17 billion before commodity upside and inflationary adjustments. And for all our long-term contracts, OpEx, maintenance CapEx and global taxes are covered by our charter counterparts.

Turning to Slide 6 and translating our backlog into annual earnings. Starting on the far left, our 70% equity ownership in the FLNG Gimi translates into an annual EBITDA generation of $150 million to Golar. This is before utilization bonuses, which as mentioned, was 19% for Q1. Hilli once on her long-term contract in Argentina will generate $285 million and the Mark II, $400 million. As you can see on the commodity side, Golar will generate approximately $100 million in excess earnings for FOB prices above $8. As mentioned, the lifting of the forward curves suggest an increased annual earnings in the front years of the -- in the range of $200 million to $500 million. This is represented by the pillar on the third one to the right on the slide.

Turning to Slide 7 and looking at the developments of the global energy market. According to BP's energy market outlook, the world today consumes approximately 270 million barrels of oil equivalent. This is set to grow to 295 million barrels of oil by 2035. The 2 fastest-growing sources to cater for this increase in energy demand is not surprisingly renewables expected to grow at 80% from a relatively low base and LNG to be the second fastest source of energy with a 42% growth rate in the same period.

To then shift to the right-hand side of the slide and drilling into where does this supply come from. As mentioned, the market is expected to grow 42% in this period. However, most of the growth is represented by the world's two largest exporters, the U.S. and Qatar. They are expected to increase their market share from 42% to 53% of global supply. Interestingly to note the U.S. is also the marginal producer, i.e., the most expensive producer of LNG globally. With their market share increasing to 33% of global supply, we see strong demand from LNG offtakers to further diversify the way from too much concentration risk on two suppliers.

If you turn to Slide 8, this is a geographical map of where LNG export exists today. Interestingly, where Golar operates today in Cameroon, Mauritania, Senegal and soon, Argentina, we represent the only output of LNG in those countries. When we depart Cameroon with Hilli this summer, Cameroon will no longer be an LNG exporter. That's not only a loss to Cameroon, but it's a loss to the global energy market, which will then pay less output of energy. There are still several countries with abundant proven gas reserves and waiting monetization. We are in advanced commercial negotiations with both established LNG exporters now considering to build incremental floating capacity as opposed to land it as well as new entrants into the market, similar to what we have achieved in Cameroon, Mauritania, Senegal and Argentina.

Turning to Slide 9. The reason why this is possible is that the gas can be sourced very attractively because today, the gas is stranded. Hence, on current energy process, several of these nations have billions of dollars literally stuck in the ground or even worse, in some cases, flared and if they can then deploy an FLNG and monetize that resource, that's the game, both to the country, to the environment and to globally energy markets. We have, on the middle graph on the top, we have a proven capability to build incremental capacity at the 30% to 40% cost advantage to land-based liquefaction solutions.

Lastly, most of the projects we are in discussions with have a shipping advantage versus volumes out of the U.S. Hence, if you have a business with 3 cost drivers, the cost of gas, the liquefaction and the shipping distance and you're cheaper on all 3, we think you have a highly sustainable competitive advantage. In fact, we see this driving the demand and the build-out of the FLNG industry. We see a very similar development to what we saw on the FPSO industry, which started in 1985 and today comprise of more than 250 units.

The FLNG industry started in 2018. We're today at 9 on the water and 5 in the construction, i.e., 14 units, and we do expect this industry to grow well north of 100 units over time. So as we say in the strapline here, we believe floating is the future, and we see a assembling development to that of the FPSOs.

Turning to Slide 11, a focus on Q1. As explained, we have a continued operational excellence on the Gimi, which produced 19% above her contractual day rate and generated north of $700,000 a day during the quarter. Hilli maintained her 100% economic upside and is now offer over 152 cargos. Because of the strengthening of the commercial pipeline, we are now actively securing slots for long lead items to secure the construction time that we are promising our clients in the commercial discussions which we reconfirmed that on March 1 and 2, we expect construction time of around 36 months and somewhat longer for Mark II.

During the quarter, we also entered into a 10% investment in the San Matthias pipeline. This is the pipeline that will bring gas from the Vaca Muerta field to the Gulf of San Matias to service both Hilli and the Mark II for year-round operations. In the shareholders agreement we have in Southern Energy, all of the shareholders have committed to invest pro rata in the San Matias pipeline. We estimate that we will invest a total of around $77 million in the pipeline of equity, and that $77 million will also generate an attractive infrastructure return once operational for 20 years.

During the quarter, CESA and Securing Energy for Europe signed an 8-year sale and purchase agreement for 2 million tonnes of the LNG production that we will produce in Argentina. 1 million of the 2 million tonnes is linked to Brent indices, and 1 million tonnes is linked to Henry Hub Industries. As mentioned, we also commenced strategic review to both maximize stakeholder value and to accelerate F&D growth.

Turning to Slide 12 and the Hilli. As already mentioned, this unit continues our market-leading performance of 100% economic uptime since we started operation in 2018. We have now produced 152 cargoes and generated $47 million in Q1. Our primary focus on the Hilli is now preparation work for the unit to disconnect from her current location at the end of July and sales to Singapore for a metal upgrade scope expected to last between 6 and 7 months before savings to Argentina to start her 20-year contract.

Turning to Gimi, which saw an all-time high production at 19% above contractual levels. Part of this outperformance is attributed to ambient temperature. Hence, when we see colder temperatures, both in the air and the sea, the units will perform better than what you can expect through summer. Hence, the 19% should not be annualized, and we do expect a lower production as we enter the summer months.

However, we do believe that over a year, we will produce meaningfully above the contractual amount, and we expect that to be reflected in our earnings on a pro rata basis. So the contractual amount brings $150 million to Golar's 70% equity stake. If you assume, let's say, 10% annualized overproduction, that's an extra $15 million of cash earnings to Golar with no associated cost attached. So that's straight to the bottom line.

Turning to Slide 14. The Mark II remains on schedule and budget. You can see some of the pictures of the progress on the right-hand side. Most importantly, we have now concluded the midship fabrication, which will house the entire liquor traction plants. We're very pleased with the development and the quality of the work done at CIMC in Yantai, China. And this gives us comfort to also look to do more units at the same location.

Turning to Slide 15. We're also progressing the infrastructure required to support our operations in Argentina. The primary workday is, as you can see from the pictures, we are constructing the compressor stations. We are tranching the both onshore and offshore to facilitate for the pipeline. There are two key pipeline activities Initially, he will produce from a 19-kilometer connection to the existing gas rigs in Argentina. That construction is well underway and our very much on schedule to be in place when he arrives.

The second pipeline is a dedicated pipeline that will go all the way from Vaca Muerta down to go to San Matias, which is north of 500 kilometers. During the quarter, CESA awarded both line pipes, compressor stations and the EPC to construct that pipeline to also ensure that, that's in place when the Mark II arrives. So far, everything is on schedule and better than originally anticipated on CESA's budgets.

Turning to Slide 16. We are now actively working to order our fourth unit within '26. This is on the back of strong development of our commercial pipeline. We see three target regions for incremental business. It continues to be West Africa, Middle East and certainly South America. We're narrowing our scope as to which design we will build. We've taken active steps to secure long lead items. We're inspecting donor vessels as we speak. And we are confirming shipyard pricing, payment terms and delivery. We will update the market as this progresses, but this is now very high on origin.

I'll now hand the call over to Eduardo to run us through group results for Q1.

Thank you, Karl, and good morning, everyone. I'm pleased to provide an overview of another quarter of strong operation execution, earnings growth and continued balance sheet progress for Golar.

Moving to Slide 18. Q1 further demonstrates the earnings power of our FLNG platform, as Gimi continues to ramp up and operational optimization translates into higher cash flow generation. Total operating revenues increased to $138 million in the quarter, while EBITDA increased 16% quarter-over-quarter to $106 million. Gimi continues to perform exceptionally well delivering 19% above contractual day rates during the quarter, supported by strong production performance, favorable invent conditions and continued operational optimization.

At the same time, Hilli once again maintained 100% commercial uptime continuing its outstanding operational track record. Net income increased significantly to $102 million in Q1 highlighting the operating upside embedded within our business model. And importantly, this performance was achieved with only two FLNG units operating today and before any contribution from Mark II. Lastly, consistent with our capital allocation framework, we're pleased to declare another quarterly dividend of $0.25 per share for Q1 2026.

Moving to Slide 19. We continue to maintain a strong balance sheet with substantial flexibility to support future FLNG growth. At quarter end, total cash stood at just over $1 billion while net interest in bearing debt was around $1.7 billion. As mentioned before, on a fully delivered basis once all three units are in operation, we expect annual run rate EBITDA to exceed $800 million before commodity upside. Based on our current capital structure, this would imply leverage reducing to around 3.4x, fully supported by long-term contracted cash flow.

Mark II remains fully unencumbered today despite $1.2 billion have been invested to date, creating significant embedded flexibility for future financing. Combined with the potential optimization of the Hilli financing structure, we continue to see meaningful opportunities to unlock additional liquidity to support further FLNG growth.

Turning to Slide 20. Our capital allocation framework remains clear, disciplined and highly aligned with our long-term shareholder value creation. We continue to prioritize three key objectives: maintaining balance sheet flexibility, funding accretive FLNG growth and increasing shareholder returns over time. During Q1, we deployed approximately $200 million across dividends and growth investments. We returned approximately $25 million to shareholders through dividends in the quarter, while investing more than $134 million across our FLNG growth projects.

Importantly, the $1.2 billion invested into Mark II has been fully equity funded highlighting both the strength of our existing cash flow platform and the substantial flexibility still available going forward. Looking ahead, we continue to target the ordering of four FLNG units during 2026, as alluded by [ Corp ]. Based on our contracted earnings profile, we continue to see a clear pathway totaled approximately $5 per share of annual free cash flow generation before commodity upside. This provides substantial flexibility between increasing shareholder returns and funding future growth opportunities. Importantly, we believe the increasing scale of our platform and financial flexibility positions Golar to evolve from a 3-unit company into a repeatable FLNG infrastructure platform over time.

Moving to Slide 21. What this slide really shows the scale and visibility of the next phase of learning for us. So today, our platform is generating $274 million of last 12 months EBITDA with only 2 units in operation. Once all 3 units are fully operational, we expect run rate EBITDA to exceed $800 million before commodity upside and before additional FLNG growth units. We expect the first major step-up in earnings during 2027, once Hilli starts operation, followed by another significant increase once the Mark II enters operation in '28.

Importantly, this EBITDA growth is expected to materially outpace incremental debt service, resulting in a substantial increase in free cash flow and shareholder return capacity. As previously discussed, our current dividend run rate is approximately $1 per share annually and could grow to over $5 per share based on contracted EBITDA. In addition, our contract with CESA provide attractive upside linked to LNG prices. With every $1 per million BTU increase in LNG prices above 8%, estimated to generate approximately $100 million of incremental annual upside. Combined with around 20 years of average remaining contract duration, we believe this provides exceptional visibility into long-term earnings and cash flow generation.

Lastly, on Slide 22. We continue to see increasing scale, liquidity and institutional participation across our capital markets presence. Our market cap has now grown to approximately $5.7 billion while average daily trading volume exceeds $100 million per day. In addition, we now have approximately $800 million outstanding across two senior unsecured bonds alongside our $575 million convertible bond maturing in 2030.

Today, investors can gain exposure to Golar through multiple ways. From our growing equity cash flow profile and increasing shareholder returns to our unsecured bonds and convertible insurance, all supported by long-term contracted FLNG infrastructure cash flows and visible future growth.

With that, I'll hand the call back to you, Karl.

Thank you, Eduardo. Turning to Slide 24 and a summary of our focus on continued value creation. Near term, we see increasing commodity prices, boosting both earnings on Hilli's remaining commodity exposure of Cameroon and for the front years of our CESA contracts. The increased utilization on Gimi results in a pro rata increase in adjusted EBITDA -- and as explained, we don't think it's fair to assume 9% annualized, but we do expect a meaningful overproduction of our committed contractual volume.

We have several levers, as Eduardo explained, for further debt optimization, in particular, on asset level financing on Hilli and the Mark II, where any significant liquidity release will be used for growth and directly to our fourth FLNG. The startup of the 20-year contract for Hilli in Argentina will be at a much higher rate versus the unit's current earnings in Cameroon. Hence, the reset of the contract will strongly benefit our cash flow. As explained a couple of times during this presentation, we are targeting to order our fourth FLNG within '26, and this is even further strengthened by the global energy market disruptions, which builds momentum in our commercial discussion.

Longer term, we see a continued strong development of the FLNG market. As we laid out, we see a similar trajectory to that of the FPSO industry, and we remain by our policy to add at least one FLNG per year going forward. We see, as Eduardo said, a capacity for multiple increase in shareholder returns just based on our existing 3 assets once they start the long-term contracts. And we see strong demand for further energy diversification and security and thereby opening new markets to LNG exports. As a matter of fact, the NPV of Golar is increasing daily until both Hilli and the MRI are operational in Argentina.

To summarize on Slide 25, we are the only proven service provider of FLNG, and we've now delivered more than 185 LNG cargoes with no unplanned downtime. We have a backlog of $17 billion. Our adjusted EBITDA will grow to $800 million a year. As Eduardo explained, we have balance sheet flexibility with a fully delivered net debt to adjusted EBITDA of just over 3x and quickly deleveraging thereafter. We're positioned for growth, and we're now focused on ordering #4, and we're equally focused on shareholder returns, which is evident both from our capital allocation policy and our ongoing strategic review.

That concludes our prepared remarks for the quarter. But before turning it over to the operator for questions, we would like to remind you that as stated in the press release announcing our strategic review, which was released on March 25, we will not provide any commentary on the strategic reprocess until the review is complete.

With that, we will now open up for questions.

[Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from the line of John Mackay from Goldman Sachs.

I appreciate all the color in the prepared remarks. I'd love just to hear a little bit more from you in terms of the commercial progress, specifically maybe how these conversations have changed or accelerated over the past 2 months since the Iran war started and whether that's brought in kind of new geographies, new types of customers, et cetera. Maybe walk us through that.

So I think one very clear effect of the disruptions in the Middle East is the bombing and fire of Roslafen, which has taken out at least 7 million tonnes for 3 to 5 years according to Qatar Gas themselves. So obviously, that impacts the forward supply-demand dynamics and also the price expectations that people can foresee in the front months of an FLNG charter. That has caused a drive for urgency and try to get as early delivery as possible.

This is why we feel strongly about securing long-lead items to ensure that we can deliver an LND in 36 months, which the way we see it will be the earliest available liquefaction capacity globally. When you then have more -- several parties interested to secure that capacity has much higher offtake prices than they originally subscribed to you can translate that into the commercial discussions. So instead of having sort of a price war with the counterpart, it's who gets the first delivery, and that's a much better dynamic for us than to discuss tariff details. So that's the key impact the way we see it.

Maybe just a follow-up for me. Clear on boat 4, has any of this started to pick up your conversations around a potential fifth boat if you're working through a couple of customers that several might end up wanting some capacity here?

Absolutely. So as we've said, the reason for launching the strategic review is to see how we can further accelerate growth, and that's on the back of the commercial discussions. So for us, the short answer is yes.

Our next question comes from the line of Chris Robertson from Deutsche Bank.

Just staying on the topic of the fourth asset here. When you're looking at a donor type vessel, which in my mind, indicates that it will be either a Mark I or Mark II. So when you're looking at a donor vessel here, does it matter the type could it be converted to either type of project or when you're selecting the vessel, is it specific to whether it will be a Mark I or Mark II.

Just trying to get your thoughts around expectations around the size, the specification of this fourth asset? And maybe any commentary you could give around expectations of whether or not terms might be similar or even improve from the last Argentinian contracts.

So your point that a donor vessel suggests Mark I or 2, we fully agree with. The answer is yes. We don't see the next one being either of the 2. The second part of the question, whatever donor vessel we secure can be used for both. The donor vessel is not what dictates Mark I or 2. The magnitude of long leads will impact Mark I and II. And for now, we are ensuring that at least we can do a Mark II. So that's where we probably see the next one coming.

In terms of the commercial terms, we have previously guided that we target long-term contracts of 15 to 20 years at a CapEx to EBITDA between 5 and 6x. And then obviously, we try to also build in inflationary adjustments as well as commodity upside. The commercial discussions we are in is within that guidance. However, they differ from geography and counterpart as to the level of fixed versus commodity exposure. Some clients, big IOCs are less inclined to pay a significant commodity upside, but are in line to pay the long-term infrastructure charter rates in the 5 to 6 CapEx to EBITDA range.

Okay. That's clear. Just turning to the dedicated gas pipeline. Can you talk a little bit more about the regulatory or any environmental approvals that are remaining, if any, and what does the construction time like look from today until completion?

Sure. So the pipeline that will go from Vaca Muerta to go to San Matias will be go alongside the oil pipeline that was started in December '24. So all of the right-of-way and regulatory approvals is in place. We do expect a separate Rig protection to be awarded to the pipeline company. There are 3 key components to the construction of the pipeline. One is line pipes that has been awarded and is under construction. The second is compressor station that was awarded back in December and is under construction. And then the third and last part is the EPC, the actual work of putting it all together. And that's also been voted the construction time is well within 2 years. So we should be very much ready for when the Mark II arise.

And our next question comes from the line of Sherif Elmaghrabi from BTIG.

Starting with the sale agreement that you signed for the Hilli is -- for both hhh and Mark II, is there an amount of LNG capacity that CESA aims to have under long-term contracts versus spot, especially since you've taken some commodity exposure on your contract with CESA.

If you take Hilli and the Mark II, Hilli capacity of approximately 2.5. Mark II of approximately 3.5. So we are in total because we guarantee 90% of time we have just shined 6 million tonnes to market. CESA has already sold the first 2 that leaves us another 4 to sell. We are actively discussing amongst the CESA shareholders to reserve around 1 million tonnes for spot cargoes. There is currently no significant outlet of LNG in South America.

Hence, with the establishment of the operations of Hilli and the Mark II in Argentina, we expect to open new local demand with a massive shipping advantage versus where they are sourcing gas today. A natural example for search spot volumes could be Brazil, which recently awarded another 30 gigawatts of PPAs where a majority of that will be gas-fired.

Hence, we see significant potential local demand for that capacity that should dictate a higher FOB price than what we can obtain on long-term contracts. However, we want to have a measured approach to it. So we will start off with around -- well, probably around 1 million tonnes, subject to the set of partnership agreement. And then we will see how that develops over time. And that's why the set the contract, for example, is 8 years, so we can optimize as we finish.

That's very helpful. And then I want to bring it back to the pipeline. It sounds like things are how long, right? Stuff under construction, everything has been awarded. Are there any key milestones we should be looking at for this year? And then perhaps more importantly, I'm curious if that pipeline would be fully utilized by the Mark II? Or is there any other spare capacity over the long term?

So March of this year. I think this year, we are seeing progress. There's nothing that will be fully complete this year. So the milestones will be, I guess, on the quarterly calls, we will provide updates on where we sit versus the schedule. When it comes to the -- I get referring to the dedicated pipeline. So when you talk about pipeline, there are two key things. It's the -- how big is the pipeline in interest and the other thing is compressor stations.

You can boost the throughput of the pipeline beyond just Hilli and Mark II, if you add compression, but there's a limit to how much you can grow it by the size of the actual pipeline in inches. So to answer the question, yes, you can boost it beyond the 2 units, but there's certainly a restriction at some point, just given the size of the pipe.

Our next question comes from the line of Alexander Bidwell from Webber Research and Advisory.

Appreciate the time. So with the Argentina project running on or slightly ahead of schedule, are there any upside mechanisms in the contracts if the project starts up early?

Sure. Then we're going to produce hydrocarbons earlier. So hydrocarbons earlier is more money earlier and the starts whenever we're ready. However, that said, there's a lot of infrastructure that should line up to the start-up of the arrival of the FLNGs and there is no upside. If the pipeline is ready and the FLNG is not, then obviously, there's no upside. So everything needs to be in place more than looking for the upside, we are just wanting to ensure that we are according to the schedule that we have put forward. And for now, we're tracking very well to achieve that.

All right. Appreciate the color there. And then I guess, just kind of piggybacking off that. So you mentioned about 90% of the FLNG infrastructure CapEx is awarded. Can you walk us through what remains outstanding?

When you do this type of work, there's always some additional contracting that will happen. For example, some of the costs you don't pay upfront, but you pay when you actually conduct the work. So -- as I mentioned, the line pipes, the compressor station and the EPC has been awarded, but there will be other costs that will come alongside when we do construction, such as roads, warehouse and certain other things that there's no reason why it should be awarded now, but it will be sort of, call it, pay-as-you-go closer in time to the delivery of the FLNG.

Our next question comes from the line of Liam Burke from B. Riley Securities.

As you move Hilli from the coast of Africa to South America, are there any significant changes in geography that would affect the modification of the FLNG as it goes from one geography to another?

So our units are generic, but there are certain adjustments you need to make. So the short answer is for the big impact, not much. The key changes, however, are One of them, it's a different met ocean condition in Argentina versus Cameroon. So we'll do relatively large modifications to the anchoring points on the Hilli, like physically where the vessel is connected to the mooring system. That's one big scope. The other one is that during winter in Argentina, you can see negative temperatures, which is not the case in Cameroon. Hence, we need to do a limited winterization scope of key components that will be exposed to such temperatures. Those are the 2 key modifications, but other than that, none.

Okay. Great. And this is sort of a nitpicking item. On corporate and other, as I mentioned, of an FSRU operation and maintenance agreements. You don't have any other legacy operations related to some of the past either carrier, LNG carrier or FSRU operations anymore, do you?

Today, no. When we started this quarter, yes. So Golar has been around for 80 years this year. We actually celebrated 80 this year. So there are always some legacy stuff, and we have done a lot of work to sort of get rid of all of it because it takes -- some of it we're making modest money on, but it takes a lot of organization time. So we have basically terminated most, if not all of them, and we no longer have any exposure to any FSRU nor LNG carrier operations.

There are no further questions at this time. I'll hand the call back to Karl for closing remarks.

Thank you all for dialing in and listening to our Q1 presentation. We wish you all a good day. Thank you.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect. Speakers, please stand by.

Welcome to the Golar LNG Limited 2025 Q4 Results Presentation. After the slide presentation by CEO, Karl Fredrik Staubo; and CFO, Eduardo Maranhao, Tor Olav Trem will have some closing comments prior to a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. I will now pass you over to Karl Fredrik Staubo. Karl, please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and welcome to Golar's Q4 2025 Earnings Results Presentation. My name is Karl Fredrik Staubo, the CEO of Golar and as the operator said, I'm accompanied today by our CFO, Eduardo Maranhao to present this quarter's results as our Chairman, Tor Troim , to give some closing remarks. Before we get into the presentation, please note the forward-looking statements on Slide 2. Starting on Slide 3 and an overview of Golar today. Golar owns 3 FLNG vessels, all with 20-year charter backlog. Starting on the top left, the Hilli is the best-performing FLNG globally and delivered another quarter of 100% economic offline. The FLNG GIMI started its 20-year contract for BP offshore Maritana in Senegal in June '25 and is now producing above the contracted volume. .

The marked FLNG is under construction and on schedule for delivery by Arend27 and thereafter to stair charter in Argentina alongside the Hilli. We have 3 growth designs ranging from 2 million to 5 million tonnes per annum, and we have obtained yard availability and pricing for all 3 designs during Q4. We're listed in NASDAQ with a market cap of approximately $4.5 billion. And per year end, we had a cash balance of $1.2 billion and a net debt position of $1.5 billion. We have an EBITDA backlog standing at $17 billion before commodity-linked earnings and inflationary adjustments. Our adjusted EBITDA for $25 million was $232 million, and we expect this to grow to about $800 million once the fleet is fully delivered and on their long-term contracts.

Turning to Slide 4 is just an illustration of the overview of the long-term cash flow visibility of our 20-year charters. Hilli will end her existing contract for Perenco in Cameroon in July this year. then go via seeded shipyard in Singapore for upgrades and life extension work before starting her 20-hour charter in Argentina during the second half of '27. GIMI is producing under 20-aircharter for BP offshore Mauritania and Senegal, and the Mark II is on schedule to start our 20-year contract during first half of '28.

On Slide 5, we build up the adjusted EBITDA contribution from the existing grid. Golar's 70% ownership of the Gimi provide us with an annual EBITDA of $150 million based on the contracted volume. Hilli will contribute $285 million, 1 on contract in Argentina. And similarly, the March 2 will contribute $400 million once operational and order. If we then net off our G&A of around $35 million, we foresee long-term EBITDA generation of $800 million a year before commodity upside inflationary adjustments and any incremental FLNG. The embedded commodity upside comprised of 2 components. It's the profit sharing mechanism in the FLNG contract as well as our 10% shareholding in Southern very -- the commodity upside provides Golar with an incremental upside of approximately $100 million for every dollar the offtake price is above $8 a turn. And a downside of approximately $28 million. For every dollar the FOB price in Argentina is below fetal cash review.

We believe the skewed risk reward of these commodity exposure will contribute meaningful earnings over the 20-year life of our Argentina contracts. Illustratively, if LNG prices return to 2022 levels, the incremental earnings from the commodity upside would be an annualization of $2.7 billion. Ore prices remain at current levels, we see an additional commodity upside of approximately $200 million per year.

Turning to Slide 6. I highlighting some of the key characteristics of our FLD charter agreements. We aim to structure our L&D contracts as solid infrastructure cash flow with meaningful contractual protections. Some of the key attributes of these protections includes that all of our contracts are paid in U.S. dollars. All cash flows are paid offshore net of any local taxes in the countries where we operate. The contracts are made under English law. And for all the long-term contracts, our operating costs and maintenance CapEx is either passed through or reimbursable by our counterparts.

Moving to the next session and the business of state starting at Slide 8. Starting on the left-hand side, Q4 was another active quarter for Golar, concluding '25 as a record year of execution. During the quarter, all conditions precedent for the 20-year contract for Mark II in Argentina was successfully met. We concluded 2 financing transactions totaling $1.7 billion in the quarter. comprising of a new $1.2 billion bank refinancing, increasing to $630 million to $1.2 billion. The new facility has improved terms compared to GIMI's initial financing facility and the new facility proves the bankability of our FLNG assets once operational on the long-term contracts.

We also entered the rated U.S. unsecured bond market with a $500 million bond offering with a coupon at 7.5%. During the quarter, CES signed a letter of agreement for an 8-year offset deal for the first 2 million tonnes of production in Argentina. The LOI was signed with SEFE, which stands for securing energy for Europe, a subsidiary of the German government -- they are also the existing offtaker for Hilli in Cameron today. So it's an offtaker. We know and cooperate well with. The terms of the offtake agreement is 1 million tonnes is linked to Brent prices and 1 million tonnes is linked to Henry Hub plus the premium. We expect these LOIs to be formed into a letter of agreement within Q1 of this year, at which point the details of the commercial terms will be disclosed. During Q4, we bought back and canceled 1.1 million shares at an average share price of $37.76.

We're also very pleased with commercial progress made in the quarter for a contemplated fourth FD projects. We'll describe this in ringreater detail later in the presentation. Turning to the right-hand side of the full development for the year. 25% was truly a record year of execution, securing $14 billion in EBITDA backlog across the Taner contracts in Argentina. We took new financing facilities of $2.275 billion across the mentioned GIMI bank refinancing and the U.S. rated bond as well as the $575 million convertible bond issued in June '25. We obtained the commercial operations date of GIMI and doubled our operating fleet of FLNG. We continue to perform according to our market-leading operational uptime, and we're especially pleased to see the GIMIjoin the operational excellence of our Sister Hilli and both vessels produced above their contracted amounts, providing extra value to our stakeholders.

In total, during '25, we bought back 3.6 million shares confirming the Board's and management's view that we see attractive value in our own stock. We truly exited LNG shipping after 50 years in the business with the sale of the Golar Arctic and our investment in Avenir shipping. So all in all, we're very pleased with the year that past and hope to keep the same progress in the year we have now started. Turning to Slide 9 and a snapshot for the gene. Hilli continues our market-leading track record. For the year, we generated a slight overproduction recognizing $2.5 million of excess earnings over the 1.4 million tonnes contracted capacity. In December, we had a major production milestone, producing our 10 million tonne of LNG since startup of contracts in 2018.

At the end of the current charter in July this year, the vessel will sail from Seadrill most from Cameroon to Sedrin Shipyard in Singapore for vessel upgrades and life accentual works. The required long lead items and equipment needed for the work at CRM have been ordered and the prefabrication of certain work scopes has started at the shipyard. During first half of next year, Helli will sales from Singapore Rodentia, to start our 20-year contract expected to start during the summer of next year. She will then contribute $285 million of annual EBITDA or $5.7 billion of adjusted EBITDA backlog for the periods.

Slide 10 focuses on Gimi. As mentioned, Gimi achieved its COD in June 25. The unit is still optimizing operations in close collaboration with the upstream partners of the GTA project. Production is ahead of schedule and solid optimization has been achieved today. In Q4, we invoiced dayrate 3% above the contractual day rate. And we are now frequently producing but volumes that on an annualized basis would significantly surpass even nameplate capacity. It's worth to note that the throughput capacity of any liquefaction plan is sensitive to gas quality and ambient temperatures.

Throughput variation between winter and summer months should therefore be expected, where colder ambient temperatures during winter benefit the production levels. However, our contracted rate is based on 90% of nameplate and any production over and beyond that number is a pro rata increase to our earnings. Based on operations to date, we expect Gimi to produce above her contracted volumes on an annual average basis, and we'll continue to improve how meaningful that can be in the months to come.

Turning to Slide 11 and the Mark II FLNG. The construction of the unit remains on pure and on schedule for delivery by year-end '27. Construction is now close to 50% complete, and we have spent approximately $1.1 billion of the total $2.2 billion conversion scope. The full $1.1 billion spent to date has been equity financed. As you can see from the pictures on the right-hand side, meaningful construction progress is now advancing. The midship manufacturing, which will help the liquefaction plant is now well underway, and the new mid section will be approximately 63 meters wide and approximately 80 meters long. We've now also surpassed 6 million man hours without any lost time injuries.

On Slide 12, SESA is also making strong progress on the infrastructure required to facilitate for the gas grid connection of the FLNG Hilli as well as the required land-based infrastructure to support FLNG operations in Argentina. SESA has now awarded approximately $500 million of investments to date, including the pipeline connection to the existing grid, support vessels such as times and supply vessels, and construction of the mandate warehouse to facilitate spare parts and operational support for our operations in Argentina.

On Slide 13, SESA is also moving ahead with a designated pipeline from Vacasa to the Gulf of Salmat. The pipeline comprised of 3 key components. The first component is the turbo compressors and the contract for those was awarded in December '25. The second component is the line pipes, which will then bring the gas, the approximate 500 kilometers from Vaca Muerta to San Matias. These were also awarded in December last year. The remaining component is the EPC for the actual construction of the line pipes and the compressor where we have received proposals and expect to have an award within the first half of this year, upon which construction will ramp up.

Turning to Slide 14. During the quarter, we confirmed yard availability and price the growth designs that we have in question, ranging from Mark 1 to be built at C3 in Singapore, Mark I and TMC Raffles in China or a 5 million-tonne units that could be built at Samsung inquiry. We're pleased to see that we still obtain attractive CapEx per ton and around 3-year construction time for the conversion candidates and north of 4 years for the Mark III. This is helpful input in developing our commercial pipeline and the price points and delivery is confirmed interest with our clients. Turning to Slide 15. We see multiple discussions for FLNG deployments. We see an increasingly strong demand for FLNG tonnage, driving positive development of our commercial pipeline. We're currently in discussions for deployment of projects in Africa, Middle East and South America. Based on the pace of the commercial developments and differences in vessel design requirements of the projects, that will dictate the design that we will order in the end.

We do not foresee any meaningful CapEx expenditure until the commercial terms for the next project have matured. We will revert to the market once we have a meaningful update on our 4th unit. Turning to Slide 16 and some of the overarching development of the LNG market. Last year, the L&D market was around 434 million tonnes, expected to grow approximately 50% in the next 5 years, mainly driven by supply out of the U.S. We note with interest that U.S., which is already the largest producer in the world, will take the vast majority of incremental growth. That's particularly interesting as the U.S. is already the incremental producer on the cost curve of LNG. We see strong demand development driven by volumes out of the Far East, where China is currently the most active buyer in the market.

Going forward, we need to see additional LNG FIDs to cater for the demand that's coming. And this fits well with the delivery schedule that's just been confirmed by the shipyards and for the commercial discussions under negotiations. I'll now hand the call over to Eduardo to take us through the group results for the quarter.

Thank you, Karl, and good morning, everyone. I'm happy to share an overview of Golar's financial performance for the fourth quarter of 2025. The -- if we move to Slide 18, let's review some of the key highlights of the quarter. Total operating revenues significantly increased in 2025, reaching $133 million for the quarter. and $394 million during the full year, an increase of over 52% when compared to 2024. This quarter, we reported net income of $23 million and a total of $113 million for the full year of 2025, an increase of 40% compared to 2024. Our Q4 adjusted EBITDA came in at $91 million, reaching a total of $265 million for the year.

Some key drivers of this performance were Hilli, as Karl mentioned before, has maintained this commercial uptime level of 100% and recognized an additional $2.5 million of production in Q4 '25. While Gimi also saw increased earnings in largely driven by higher production volumes resulting from technical improvements and also improved ambient conditions on site. This quarter, we declared a dividend of $0.25 per share with a record date of March 9 and the payment scheduled for March 18. In November, we approved a new $150 million buyback program, of which approximately $41 million was spent during Q4 at an average price of $37.76 per share. Across the full 2025, we have been consistently active on buybacks and repurchased and canceled a total of 3.6 million shares. I'll provide some further information on this in the next slide.

Moving to Slide 19. We continue to improve our balance sheet flexibility and Q4 was a very active quarter in terms of transactions. In October, we issued $500 million under our first U.S. rated 5-year senior unsecured note with a coupon of 7.5%. And at that time, we repaid $190 million of our previous outstanding 2021 bunch. In November, we closed a new $1.2 billion commercial bank facility for Gene equivalent to just over 5.6x its annual contracted EBITDA. This allows us to release approximately $400 million in liquidity net to Golar. Our cash position remains strong with $1.2 billion of cash in hand at the year-end. Our total gross debt stood at $2.7 billion, leaving us with a net debt position of $1.5 billion. On a fully delivered basis in 2028 once all FLNGs are in operation in Argentina, our net debt-to-EBITDA ratio is set to reduce significantly to just over 3.4x.

When it comes to the Mark II, we continue to fund its CapEx commitment. And so far, we have spent just over $1.1 billion to date. All of that amount has been funded with equity. So we continue to evaluate further debt optimization alternatives, which may include the refinancing of Hilli's current facility and a new long-term debt facility backed by March June. This would allow us to continue to release significant liquidity to continue to support our fund our growth projects.

Now moving to Slide 20. We continue to focus on accretive growth while maintaining a sustainable quality of shareholder returns. Our plan is to allocate most of operating cash flow after debt service to shareholders. while continue to recycle capital through asset level financing and existing debt optimizations to fund growth. In 2025, we returned approximately $250 million in the form of dividends and buybacks, of which $103 million were paid in dividends over the course of the year and $144 million in buybacks, as explained before. During that same period, we continued to grow, and we've invested over $750 million for our FLNG unit.

Moving to Slide 21. We can see that our share count has been significantly reduced over time, with a total of just over 101 million shares of changing as of today. Over the course of last year, we bought back and subsequently canceled 3.6 million shares, as explained before. We currently have a remaining allowance of up to $190 million under our buyback program, and we plan to continue our active approach to accretive buybacks from time to time.

Moving to Slide 22. When our 3 FLNG is in full operations in Argentina, we expect our EBITDA to grow to over $800 million before further commodity upside. This can grow even more, subject to further upside from LNG prices under the contract for Hilli and Mark C. Based on that, our free cash flow generation could reach around $500 million per year or approximately $5 a share before commodity side. This could represent a total increase of over 5x our current dividend level of $1 per share, which we are currently paying. Incremental free cash flow could also be resulting under the sales of contracts and can be estimated at approximately $100 million per year for every dollar per million BTU increase in FOB prices above $8.

Moving to Slide 23. I just wanted to recap that there are many ways that investors can get exposure to Golar. We are listed in NASDAQ, and our market cap was just over $4.5 billion with an average daily volume of over $50 million per day. We currently have $800 million under 2 unsecured bonds issued in '24 and '25 and also an existing convertible bond of $575 million, which was issued last year. So there are many different ways that investors can gain exposure to Golar, and this is a summary of how you can play that. I'll hand now the call back to you, Karl.

Thank you, Eduardo. And turning to Slide 25 and a look ahead at what our focus on continued value creation. Near term, we see increasing commodity prices that will boost the commodity-linked earnings for Hilli until end of contract in July this year. Based on the strong performance of Gimi, we also expect to see increased capacity utilization payments that will somewhat improve the adjusted EBITDA from the. We believe 1 of the most or the least understood part of Golar is the commodity upside of our Argentina contracts. And -- within this quarter, we expect the commercial terms for the sector offtake to be announced. And hopefully, that can ease the market's understanding the of that potential also. We've done -- we've proven to do accretive buyback and cancellation of Golar shares, and we have more capacity under the existing buyback program. Throughout the year and we'll continue to look for Asset-level debt optimization, and there's plenty of opportunity to do so across Hire and the marks that could release significant liquidity to fund a fourth FLNG unit and enhanced equity returns. The start-up of the Hilli and the Mark II contract in Argentina is obvious step changes in earnings growth as well. .

The commercial pipeline of new project, new FLNG projects remains under strong development, and we see the terms in which we believe we can obtain to be highly accretive to our platform value. The commodity exposure on the SESA contracts will come into fruition as the 2 units become operational. As Eduardo just explained, the dividend capacity and the capacity to multiply increase that is evident once we're fully operational. We continue to see structural strong LNG demand beyond 2030 onwards. And our focused FLNG strategy with proven FLV conversion expertise and the recently reconfirmed price and delivery schedule from the conversion shape yards, so further testimony to our business model. Another interesting thing to note is that the net present value of Golar is increasing daily until both FLNGs are operational in Argentina. That's a function of time.

Turning to Slide 26. Golar remains the only proven service provider of FLNG globally. We have an adjusted EBITDA backlog of $17 billion before commodity upside and inflationary adjustments. We remain with strong balance sheet flexibility of around 3.4x net debt to EBITDA once fully delivered. This enables growth while still increasing shareholder returns. I'll now hand the call over to our Chairman, Tor Troim, for some closing remarks before we open up for Q&A. Please go ahead, sir.

Yes. Thanks, Karl. First of all, I want to give you some thanks to management for a good execution in the year we have behind us to effectively secure $14 billion in EBITDA backlog and doing more than $2 billion in financing, pay more than $1 billion in debt -- in installment on the Mark II and end the year with more than $1 billion in cash. It puts us in a very strong position to execute what we think should be an aggressive growth strategy being the world's leading FLNG player in the market. We see today significant more demand for projects than we ever have seen -- and it's more a question about concentrating our efforts into the projects we think can give the highest possible overall return. It's one of the Board's mission to maximize the value of the company for all sellers, both on long- and short-term basis. To have an effectively priced equity is a major condition for growing this business.

The value we are today, as Carl alerted to is linked to 3 things. It's the value of the existing contract. It's the value of the options agreement we have, which is pretty much a one-sided call on gas for the next 20 years. and is effectively the value of the Golar franchise. I know everybody is pretty good in calculating the value of the existing contracts. I don't think anybody really pay attention to the value of the options, but I'd like to focus a little bit about the turn, the value of the Golar franchise. It's 26 years since Fredricson took over Golar and we effectively started the venture to build a massive LNG company -- it's now 16 years since we effectively started the work on the FLNG activities, which started in 2010. In '14, we ordered the first vessel. It was in operation in 2018, and we now have 8 years of extremely successful operations. That franchise, I don't think anybody fully understands the value but to illustrate a little bit we have been approached by one of the largest oil companies in the world who effectively said we cannot do this. Can you be your service arm to deliver FLNG activities going forward.

I think that's a question to take those kind of things, it's probably a limited return compared to a lot of the other things we can do. But I think in many ways, to illustrate the value of the franchise we have built, which I think people are grossly estimating what they're trying to do the value. When it comes to the way we and the Board look at the value, I think so far, it's represented by the fact that we're buying back stocks. And that's a reflection of the fact that we don't think the value -- we think it's almost better to buy back your own stock at an undervaluation and to effectively do anything else. We have also decided to push out the vessel number 4 and maybe also on vessel number 5, a little bit, not because of lack of projects, but we're going through 2 years in '26 and '27, where we have limited cash flow because the market has not started leasing for a payer.

So I think what we want to do is to push the investment phase closer to the period where we are effectively running with an $800 million EBITDA and our actual self-service with capital for growth purposes. I was on the call in connection with the Q numbers and I said then that if an undervaluation compared to the real value exists over time, then the Board will kind of start processes, which try to take out part of that benefit. Even if the share price in the latter weeks have shown some signs of recovery, the board still feels that the value of this company, including the value drivers I just mentioned, particularly #2 and #3 should mean that the share price should have been higher than where it is today.

What we have seen in other situations in this industry is that the valuation typically come when the cash is coming. It doesn't come with the contract signing. -- are referring to companies like Chenier, where you actually saw that the share price started to move when this cash finally came from the discussions. So in order to kind of look at what we can do in the meantime, we have to explore alternative waste to enhance the value for the period under the cash flow come in 2028. We have, as the Board started a process where we're going to seek external advice to several ways to improve this -- the value for our shareholders. This thing includes processes, which includes talk to shareholders, it includes to industrial and financial potential partners, which can help us in enhancing the value of the company on a more shorter-term basis.

The market should be aware that we several years ago, we received unsolicited offer for the company, several ones. We structured that into process and all the offers were, at that time, significantly harder than the share price the Board decided, however, not to recommend the sale of the company, which I think in retrospect, has been the right decision to see how we later have built the company.

The Board of Golar today consists of Board members, including myself, which represent significant capital invested in the company. And you should be sure that the Board have no other considerations than to do what we believe is the best interest for all shareholders. There is no other agenda here. The outcome of such a strategic process is kind of we are in the process of starting, combined with the Board's internal discussion, it's too early to be expected. But we'll keep the market updated if these processes are likely to lead to material faces in Golar's operational or corporate structure. I hope please confirm the commitment I gave to the shareholders in connection with the Q1 report last year, where I said that we intend to do things if you don't see material improvement on share price. We have seen some, but I think we still feel with $17 billion of EBITDA backlog an industry-leading position, including a derivative, which is significant value that there are rooms for improvement. .

And I generally hope that you all guys kind of give us some time to go through this process. And as I said, no outcome is given, but I can assure you that the commitment we gave a year ago to explore alternative way to extract value is kind of on the agenda for the Board, that's the only thing I want to say about this thing, and we will report back to the Board to shareholders as we make progress on listing. In the meantime, as Karl said, the value of the company should increase day by day as close as we get to the window in 2028. What I want to end with is that the venture we started 16 years ago, which was to effectively become a dominant FLNG player pays off. I'm very proud of the performance of the Hilli contract, and equally improved, that we know can deliver to BP and probably be the only part of the Greater 2 project, which had delivered on time and on budget and effectively delivering more than we should, according to the contracts.

So thanks, I hope that was enough to confirm that what we're saying in earlier calls are lived up to by the Board. Thank you.

Thank you, Tor. So operator, we are now ready for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of John McKay from Goldman Sachs and Co.

I appreciate all the thoughts around the strategic review. I just wanted to drill into the details a little bit. I understand it's kind of a multifaceted process. But can you walk us through what the specific process you're focused on right now looks like? What could timing be? What are you watching to decide how to move forward and maybe to put a bow on it, you mentioned you were approached. Is one of the options on the table here a potential sale of the company? .

I think in view of the discussion we have had in the Board, how we want to orientate the market around this. I don't want to give any further comments than what I've effectively already said. I think, hopefully, the shareholders have some respect for the fact that these kind of processes kind of kind of need to be kept a little bit close to the Board and not effectively be a public process.

Okay. Maybe asking it a different way. You highlighted the current value of the company, your desire to push maybe some of the next vessels to the right a little bit to reallocate capital. Is the message here that the focus right now should be on further buybacks specifically? And I guess, at what point do you decide to switch from maybe investing in the base business to buying effectively the base business to commercialize any of the next vessel?

I can open up on. So there's no change in our committed focus to develop attractive FLNG projects and none of the actions taken today will pause the pace of the commercial involvement of the contract in discussion. That said, an F&D project, if it's just to agree commercial terms with the counterpart, that will be fairly easy. These are very large infrastructure projects that require significant regulatory, governmental tax and environmental approvals, including LNG export laws and most of the -- or -- some of the countries we're in discussions for didn't export LNG before we started it. That's true for Cameron, that's true for Maritana, that is true for Senegal and it's true for Argentina. .

So there is absolutely no change whatsoever in Golar's committed focus for accretive FLNG growth. What we're saying is some of the projects in discussion have different vessel design requirements. Hence, instead of going on speculation, number one, because of the different requirements from the various commercial discussions and number two, for the cash flow profile reasons mentioned by Tor, we've decided to not go on speculation as speculative as we have previously done and then continue to mature the commercial pipeline before we commit significant capital, both because we believe that's right from a vessel design selection point of view and also for the cash flow profile that ore.

Let me add a little bit to that, Karl. I think kind of just have 1 thing in mind the process, which we're talking about now, where we're seeking some external advice for what the kind of options is for the future of Golar is not in any way influencing the day-to-day business. What the Board has given a clear a management is run the business as we run it to the best interest of things and don't let any kind of strategic discussions influence what we do in short term. I think any kind of strategic discussion will benefit from building -- continue to building the company like we do, so I think that's the most important thing. This is business as usual and nothing else happening, but I think we're looking at some other alternatives. If there are deeper access to capital, for instance, then effectively, we have today. I think that's important. I think when the -- what Karl says about '27 and '28 is '26 and '27 is that if we push the current cash back a little bit, maybe half year to year, we will be in a very different situation because in the end of the period when we have the installments on 4 and potential 5, you will also meet that with a massive cash flow coming out from the business.

So I think it's a pretty tough decision, which I also know is supported by some of our major shareholders have given us the same input. We have been through the history here in this company where we've done $3 billion projects or more than $1 billion project with a pretty tiny balance sheet that had the balance sheet under stress in some of the cases. I don't think we want that. We want to have a very, very strong and solid balance sheet to execute on multibillion dollar projects which we're talking about here.

We'll now move on to our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Chris Robertson from Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Just given the strong operational performance of the Gimi over the last several months, it's producing slightly above nameplate, as you say here. How are the counterparties now thinking about the future of expansion at GTA? What other data points do they need to see or evaluate to make a decision around that and what's the current thinking potentially around if an expansion would include a floating asset?

That question is probably better placed to be here in Cosmos, but the fact -- what BPS consistently said is that they want 12 to 18 months of well data before a decision is made on expansion, but it has to do with how the wells perform. Given that we're now producing above the contracted amount suggests that the -- not only the FLNG, but the flow from the upstream and the other infrastructure is also working at least as expected, if not better. And that should help a decision for expansion and given that the incremental cost of expansion should be significantly lower than the initial phase, any growth should be accretive to the project economics. .

My follow-up question here is, Karl, you mentioned getting quotes at the yards recently. This is kind of a 2-part question. One, what's the current thinking around the cost for Hilli upgraded redeployment work? Has that range narrowed at all as we get kind of closer here to the summer months? And then two, could you clarify kind of where things are shaking out in terms of where you're getting quotes at in terms of a dollar per metric ton, have we seen any cost inflation since the Fuji project? Any commentary around that would be helpful.

Sure. So on Hilli, the conversion budget, when we say conversion burden, that includes everything from disconnecting in Cameron, towing and bothering the vessel from Cameron to Singapore, the yard state and sailing back to Argentina and connecting and commissioning OpEx, training, spares and upgrade work. All in, we estimate $350 million, including a certain level of contingencies. We -- as we continue to execute on the Hilli redeployment as most of the equipment is now ordered we feel comfortable with that budget, and we'll try not to eat into all of the contingencies built into the $350 million, but that's the merger. But it's important to highlight that, that includes everything, not just the upgrade solution. And then the second part of the question, do we see price inflation. Yes. The price inflation is not so much on the yard scope. It's more on the top side and in particular, the long lead equipment on the top side.

The primary driver of that cost inflation is competition for the equipment, mainly from AI data centers. We're using the same gas turbines and some of the other critical components, and the massive surge in such development has caused lead times to go out and prices for that equipment to go meaningfully up. If we then look across FLNG, we see very limited cost inflation of the Mark II compared to where we ordered last time. We do see higher cost inflation on the Mark 1 compared to where we ordered, but that's obviously a function also of a longer time since we are a Mark I. And the biggest cost inflation is without a doubt on the mark that for Mark III is also driven by competition at the shipyard, namely Samsung.

So that's how we see it. But we still see that we can obtain a cost advantage compared to land-based up to 40% lower CapEx per tonne for Mark I and II not so much for Mark III.

We will now move on to our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Alexander Bidwell from Webber Research and Advisory.

I appreciate the time. with the performance thus far on Gene, how should we think about production above contractual base going forward? You had mentioned ambient temperature and gas composition are both key drivers. Are there any other factors such as maintenance, which would impact production quarter-over-quarter?

Sure. So maintenance is built into the difference between nameplate of 2.7 and the contractual amount of 2.4. So that's already taken into account scheduled maintenance. When it comes to the ambient temperature effects, you will see a level of seasonality over and above the 2.4%. We don't expect to go under the 2.4% in the summer months. and we expect to be meaningfully higher in the winter months. So if you smooth it out on average, we expect to be well above the contracted amount. In the case of Q4, that amount was 3%, but we're still undergoing optimization, and we think more than 3% is fair to assume across the year. Exact percentages we post to commit to right now as we are in the midst of these optimizations. To have this type of production, this early in the project exceeds the expectation, both on Roller and on the charter. .

All right. Great color there. Turning over to Argentina. Could you walk us through the start-up and commissioning cadence for Helium the Mark II once the assets are actually on site. And -- are there any lessons learned from Cameroon and DTA that you plan to apply for the deployments?

Yes. So when it comes to -- they will be slightly different because Hilli obviously operated for 8 years as well as the market will be -- have never operated. So we expect the commission permissioning process of Hill to be quicker than the March. And for simplicity, we expect commissioning of Hilli to be around 3 to 4 months, and we expect up to 6 months for the March to simply because the equipment hasn't been running in December. The actual process is that we arrive on site, we connect to the mooring system and then we start commissioning through gas in production. The key learning effect that we are debating with Cestas are likely to adopt is that we do expect arrive call. What that means is that we will arrive or likely will arrive with some LNG on the tanks, that allows us to start commissioning before we are reliant on gas flowing through the pipeline.

Hence, we can save any time that it will take to connect to the grid and secondly, the call down process itself. That has a slight cost within the scheme of FLNG CapEx almost negligible. -- this can save significant time and it's the same as what we did both for Hilli and Gimi Commission.

We'll now move on to our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Sherif Elmaghrabi from BTIG.

Maybe to start off, sticking with the game, are project partners given production has been surprise to the upside. Are project partners still interested in debottlenecking and what needs to happen to debottleneck give me the already capable of exceeding nameplate by a fair margin?

Again, it's a question for the upstream partners more than us, but it's in everybody's interest to debottleneck provided you can do so and add, call it, CapEx accretive to the CapEx -- to the unit economics of the project. And we do expect that such that the bottom, I think, will be at a very meaningful accretion to unit economics and a certain in the interest of all stakeholders, including OR.

Okay. And then turning to a fourth or fifth unit. Can you elaborate on these Middle East and opportunities? That's not something that was on my radar, but it's interesting and I'm wondering if that's linked to ramping unconventional gas production in the region.

You are right that, that is a region that has, call it, saved up as more and more actively pursuing FLNG and it's one of the regions where we like the pace of progress in our commercial -- or in the project development of potential FLNG projects. So for that one, you are right. That's one we haven't spoken as much as about previously, but what we are hopeful that we can continue to develop our pet. .

We'll now move on to our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Spiro Dounis from Citi.

Wanted to go back to demand. I think I heard you guys say several times that you're seeing more demand than ever before for the LNG infrastructure. I was just wondering if you could expand on that. Is that macro related? Or is that specific to more of an FLNG solution or maybe both?

I think it's twofold. One of it is the increasing industry recognition of the efficiency of FLD versus alternative liquefaction solutions. The track that you can construct this unit is up to 40% discount and the flexibility, a movable FLNG provides versus Vantage is 1 key driver. The other key driver is that the vast majority of incremental production of LND will come out of the U.S. and all U.S. projects or the but majority of U.S. products sourced at Henry Hub. So the attraction is when you can find returns that you can source in addition to the CapEx savings, but significantly cheaper gas sourcing than Henry Hub, that's the other component that drives the interest. .

So for us, it's increasing industry recognition and the attraction of sourcing cheaper molecules.

Got you. That's helpful color. Second one maybe for Eduardo. Just you mentioned on this latest refinancing or financing that it sort of proves out the bankability of these structures. Could you maybe expand on that as we think about the go-forward here, you obviously have a lot more financings to do. Does this latest 1 prove as a blueprint, -- what lessons did you learn during this last go around?

Yes. That's a great point, sure. So you're absolutely right when it comes to the data points that we had on the latest financing. So when we look at the Gimi deal that we closed in November, we raised $1.2 billion, which is just over 5.6x Gimi's annual EBITDA. So if you try to apply and we are in discussions with potential similar transactions to that one, if we were to apply the same multiple to both Hilli and or the Mark II, we could be looking to raise in excess of $1.5 billion worth Hiland over $2 billion for the Mark II. So that really shows the whole potential of financing capacity that we have under this contract. These are long-term 20-year agreements, and we really believe on the bankability of this contract that we have signed up to. .

We'll now move on to our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Liam Burke from B. Riley Securities.

Karl, you talked about a lot of interest in potential negotiations for future FLNG projects. did shipyard capacity ever come into the negotiation? Or does that -- I mean, Chris touched on cost. But shipyard capacity, does that ever come into future discussions?

Absolutely, yes. That is why it's been critical as part of this commercial pipeline development to have confirm the yard availability and update the yard pricing in continuing such discussions because delivery is obviously a key part of this. What we see is that for the conversion, Mark I and II, we are still able to maintain a very, very competitive conversion period of somewhere between 36 and 40 months, whether or not we go Mark II or Mark I. What we see is that if you go bigger on the Mark III, meaning we pushed out even since we have the outset with the shipyard 6 to 9 months ago. So on that front, we see the yard availability as a negative on the first 2, we still see it as a factor.

Great. And then Other FLNGs they're mostly operated by the major energy companies. Has there been any potential competition on the FLNG as a service only from any other providers?

Nobody else in the world has done vessel conversions, FLNG vessel commercials. We think that the CapEx and delivery time is better obtained in the current yard and normed situations for vessel conversion than it is for new builds. As part of the updates we've had with the shipyards, we have also explored new builds on the smaller sizes that reconfirms that conversion is the cheapest and most efficient way to do, but obviously, it comes with significant engineering complication that Golar has built up over time.

So we do see that there are more and more measures going for this type of technology, but there are significant advantages doing it with us as a service provider as opposed to replicating this through a new build. -- because you can also attend the same benefit.

There are no further questions at this time. So I will hand the call back to Karl for closing remarks. .

Thank you all for dialing in and listening to the Q4 presentation. Have a great day. .

This concludes today's presentation. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

Welcome to the Golar LNG Limited Third Quarter 2025 Results Presentation. After the slide presentation by CEO, Karl Fredrik Staubo ; and CFO, Eduardo Maranhao, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] I will now pass you over to Karl Fredrik Staubo. Karl, please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and good morning from our head office in Bermuda. Welcome to Golar's Q3 2025 Earnings Results Presentation. My name is Karl Fredrik Staubo, the CEO of Golar, and I'm accompanied today by our CFO, Eduardo Maranhao.

Before we get into the presentation, please note the forward-looking statements on Slide 2.

Starting on Slide 3 and an overview of Golar. Following our announcement on October 23, our existing fleet of 3 FLNGs are now fully contracted on 20-year charter durations with a total EBITDA backlog of $17 billion before commodity upside and inflationary adjustments.

Now that the existing fleet is fully contracted, the key focus of the company is now on developing our fourth FLNG unit. During the quarter, we've made significant technical and commercial progress in deciding on size and design of our next units. As you can see on the bottom half of the slide, we have 3 different growth designs, the Mark 1, 2 and 3, which differ in liquefaction size ranging from 2.5 million tons all the way up to 5.4 million tons.

We're on track to decide on the next FLNG project in the coming months.

Over the course of the last 5 months, we've also concluded just over $1 billion in new corporate debt facilities and retired our October Norwegian bond maturity of $190 million. Following these developments, we now have a cash position of $1 billion and a net debt position of around $1.4 billion.

Over the last 12 months, we generated $221 million of adjusted EBITDA, mainly from the operations of the Hilli.

Our EBITDA generation is set to quadruple from contracted EBITDA once our existing fleet is fully delivered during 2028.

Turning to Slide 4 and the highlight of the quarter is, for sure, the final FID and successful fulfillment of all CPs for Mark II's 20-year charter in Argentina.

We now have earnings visibility for all our assets through 2045 and beyond.

The total earnings backlog stands at $17 billion before commodity upside and inflationary adjustments, and this creates a very solid base to add further attractive FLNG projects to the portfolio.

Turning to Slide 5, we highlight some of the key characteristics of our FLNG charter agreements.

Golar aims to structure our long-term contracts as solid infrastructure cash flow with meaningful contractual protections. Some of the key attributes to these protections include that all of our contracts are paid in U.S. dollars. All cash flows are paid offshore and net of any local taxes in the country where we operate. All of our contracts are on English law. And for all our long-term contracts, operating costs and maintenance CapEx is either passed through or reimbursable by our counterparts.

In addition to these strong protections, we have further fiscal protections for our 2 contracts in Argentina, including 30-year noninterruptible export licenses, environmental assessment approvals and protection from any changes to fiscal or regulatory terms, including taxes, et cetera, through the large investment protection under the RIGI framework in Argentina.

We furthermore have corporate guarantees from the parent companies of our counterparts for a significant portion of the contract backlog to safeguard the cash flows.

Our mission is to identify attractive gas reserves globally and utilize our FLNG technology to monetize these assets together with strong upstream partners. We try to structure the contract in a manner where we reduce the country risk by creating the mentioned strong contractual and regulatory protections as well as creating a buffer between Golar's operations and the country where we operate. These buffers are essentially the charters of the unit, which in turn includes Perenco in Cameroon, BP offshore Mauritania and Senegal and the ESA Consortium in Argentina, where we have the pro rata corporate guarantees from the shareholders, which comprise Pan American Energy, YPF, Pampa and Harbour.

Turning to Slide 7 and a business update for the quarter. Q3 was one of the strongest quarter in the history of Golar, now adding $8 billion of firm EBITDA backlog through the lifting of all CPs and FID for the 20-year charter of Mark II to Argentina.

In addition, we entered the U.S. rated unsecured market with Golar's first ever U.S. documented $500 million bond with a 5-year duration carrying a 7.5% coupon.

In the quarter, we also retired a Norwegian bond with a net outstanding amount of $190 million at maturity in October. We've also signed the Hilli redeployment scope in between her contracts in Cameroon and before starting the contract in Argentina, where the vessel will return to her original construction shipyard at Seatrium in Singapore.

We've also approved the ordering of long lead items for the fourth FLNG, and we've approved a new $150 million buyback program in line with our track record of buying back over 9 million shares over the course of the last 5 years.

Turning to Slide 8 and focus on Hilli. Hilli maintains her market-leading operational track record with another quarter of 100% economic uptime. We've now delivered 142 cargoes since start-up or producing more than 9.8 million tons of LNG.

During the quarter, the unit generated $51 million of adjusted EBITDA to Golar.

Turning to Slide 2 and focus on the Gimi. Gimi started her commercial operations date under the 20-year contract for BP offshore Mauritania and Senegal in June this year.

We're very pleased to see that operations are stabilizing and continuously improving in throughput. We're now fine-tuning operations with daily production frequently exceeding base capacity.

In addition, we're actively working with the GTA partners to identify and develop value-enhancing initiatives for the GTA projects. These initiatives include operational efficiencies and debottlenecking of production capacity to improve unit economics and overall throughput, which will then benefit the potential earnings of Gimi over and beyond the base EBITDA.

We're also pleased to announce that we're in very advanced stages of entering into a new credit approved $1.2 billion bank refinancing facility of the Gimi. We expect this facility to close within this quarter, and Eduardo will explain this in further detail in the later section.

Turning to Slide 3 and a focus on the Mark II. As already explained, the key highlight of the quarter was the FID reached in August and the CP satisfaction met in October.

The project remains on schedule for delivery in Q4 '27, and we expect to commence operations in Argentina during '28.

To date, we have spent $1 billion out of the total conversion budget of $2.2 billion and the $1 billion has been fully equity funded by Golar to date.

You can see on the pictures some of the progress made on the shipyard in China. To the left, you can see the ship, which is divided in 2 parts and now sits on land. In the middle, we have had the key laying ceremony to construct the new mid-ship section, which will be 80 meters long and 63 meters wide and will house the liquefaction plant of the units. And you can see the model structural assembly ongoing to the far right. This is part of the equipment that will be injected into the mid-section.

Turning to Slide 11. Year-to-date, we've secured $14 billion in adjusted EBITDA backlog across Hilli and the Mark II, where all of the FID and CPs for Hilli was met in May and for the Mark II between August and October.

We see the combination of these 2 contracts as a very strong addition to Golar's portfolio, generating a base EBITDA of $685 million over 20 years before meaningful commodity upside and inflationary adjustments, both of which Eduardo will explain in further detail later on.

Turning to our key focus going forward is adding Unit #4, where we explain further details on Slide #12. As we explained on our Q2 call, we made commitments to the 3 shipyards to come up with updated pricing, delivery and payment terms if we were to go ahead with 1 of the 3 designs. We have now obtained such pricing and delivery times from all the 3 shipyards.

The Mark I design is the same design of both the Hilli and Gimi. It's a proven design. We know it well, and the current pricing works and aligns with some of the commercial discussions ongoing.

The Mark II would be a repeat of the vessel currently under construction, and we are pleased to reconfirm time and price with the shipyard.

We've also spent a considerable amount of time getting an updated price time and schedule for the Mark III, and we continue to see yard pressure for attractive slots and delivery times. And we do think that timing is of the essence if you want to lock in attractive delivery.

The key pressure item for the delivery of all 3 assets are long lead items. These long lead items see significant pressure both on delivery and price, mainly driven by the AI data center boom in the U.S.

We now see relatively new entrants into some of these suppliers where companies like Google, Alphabet, Meta and so on are ordering gas turbines in large quantities, putting price pressure and delivery pressure.

Being an existing large and long-term client of these sub-suppliers helps us in securing attractive slots despite the increased competitive landscape.

We have, therefore, gotten Board approval to enter into long lead items during this quarter, and we expect to do so in the coming weeks and months to safeguard the delivery times now confirmed by the shipyards through -- over the course of the last few months.

So what do we mean when we say we're going to go ahead ordering Unit #4? Well, we think the case study of the Mark II over the course of the last 12 months is relevant and what's highlighted on Slide 13.

The Mark II, we placed the order in September '24 on speculation. Even if we had very strong commercial lead, the order was initially on speculation. In May '25, we signed a 20-year charter with SESA. FID was met in August and all conditions met in October.

What we clearly saw from ordering the unit on speculation alongside the redeployment of Hilli was that we were able to drive considerable commercial value in Golar's favor by having a firm delivery and several commercial opportunities available.

We are planning to following the same recipe for Unit #4. There were several commercial interests, both on the Hilli redeployment and on Mark II that lost out to the Argentinians. We have obviously maintained those discussions, and we've also developed incremental units, incremental projects.

Therefore, we plan on using the same methodology to drive commercial value in our favor with a similar time line expected for a new project.

The CapEx to EBITDA for the Mark II was 5.5x for a 20-year contract before the commodity upside and the inflationary adjustments.

We continue to see a strong development in the commercial pipeline for new projects, and we're therefore comfortable to go ahead with ordering the long leads imminently.

Turning to Page 14. We've made further advances for the next unit. We've confirmed between 36 and 38 months of construction time, both for the Mark I and the Mark II and around 48 months for the Mark III. The primary reason for the longer lead time on the Mark III is that for that unit, we are not starting with a donor vessel, but purpose building from the get-go, and it's also larger in size and require longer time.

As already explained, we received updated pricing delivery and payment terms, which are broadly satisfactory to the project economics that we're targeting.

We have identified and inspected donor vessels. And given the state of the current LNG shipping market, we're very pleased with the levels in which we can source attractive conversion units.

We're now working to narrow commercial opportunity set and upstream timing and decide on FLNG design.

We will target long-term infrastructure contracts, and we have positioned the balance sheet to facilitate to add one more unit.

We're now on track to decide on the fourth FLNG vessel in the coming months, but starting with long lead items imminent.

Turning to Slide 15 and to elaborate a bit on the market opportunity and what we see ahead of us. It's tempting to look to the FPSO industry's development, which started in 1985 with its first unit and grew very quickly to around 20 units 10 years later. We see and today stands at more than 250 units globally with 10 projects to 15 projects added annually.

We see a similar development taking place in the FLNG industry. We're very pleased to see the increasing adoption by the industry that FLNGs are the cheapest, quickest and most efficient way of monetizing stranded and associated and flare gas resources globally.

Golar pioneered this business with the first delivery in 2018, and the fleet now stands at 14 units with several planned incremental projects in development. We're pleased with our position as the only proven provider of FLNG as-a-service, and we plan on maintaining an active growth strategy for as long as we can secure economics along the lines of our existing contracts for 20-year durations.

We will, however, maintain our policy of having maximum unchartered FLNG at the time. As we've explained over several calls, we still -- the key premise of our business.

The gas liquefaction has 3 cost drivers: the cost of lifting the gas, the cost of liquefying the gas and the shipping distance from where the gas is produced to where it's consumed.

The largest current exporter in the world of LNG is the U.S. They also happen to be the largest source of growth of incremental supply over the coming 5 years to 10 years. And they also happen to be the most expensive producer, so the incremental producer.

Hence, if we can source projects where we can produce the gas significantly cheaper than Henry Hub, we know we have an attractive cost competitive advantage in constructing the liquefaction units. And more often than not, our projects are closer to end users and therefore, have a shipping advantage.

And if we have this or continue to develop projects with the 3 significant cost advantages over the largest and incremental producer in this market, we believe we have a very strong business and one that we will continue to grow.

Turning to Eduardo for group results.

Thank you, Karl, and good morning, everyone. I'm pleased to give an overview of Golar's financial performance for the third quarter of 2025.

So moving to Slide 18, let's review the key financial highlights of the quarter.

Following Gimi's COD in June, this was the first quarter with full operations of both of our units. I'm pleased to share that Gimi has been performing extremely well and daily production is now frequently exceeding base capacity. We achieved total operating revenues of $123 million in the quarter and net FLNG tariffs of $132 million in this quarter.

Hilli contributed $51 million to our EBITDA, while Gimi added $48 million this quarter. In connection with the start-up of operations of Gimi, we incurred certain one-off expenses, which are expected to be normalized in the next quarters.

When accounting for the corporate and project development expenses this quarter, our total adjusted EBITDA reached $83 million. Total EBITDA for the last 12 months ended in Q3 was $221 million.

This quarter, we reported a net income of $46 million. This figure is inclusive of $12 million of noncash items, such as adjustments in the value of embedded TTF and Brent derivatives within the Hilli contract as well as changes in our interest rate swaps.

In October, we raised $500 million under our first U.S. rated senior unsecured bonds with a new 5-year note at a cost of 7.5% . Following that, we repaid $190 million of our unsecured Norwegian bonds issued back in 2021.

Our liquidity now stands at approximately $1 billion of cash on hand. So following that, our net debt position right now stands at just under $1.4 billion.

Lastly, we're pleased to declare a dividend of $0.25 per share this quarter with a record date of November 17 and payment scheduled for November 24.

Now moving to Slide 19. We continue to focus on accretive growth while maintaining a sustainable policy of shareholder returns. As our units come online, we plan to return most of operating cash flow after debt service to shareholders, while we'll continue to recycle capital through asset level financings and existing debt optimization to fund accretive growth. These are not mutually exclusive.

Over the last 5 years, we returned more than $800 million to shareholders, including dividends of over $260 million and buybacks of more than 9.3 million shares at an average price of $125 per share, bringing the total share count to 102 million shares outstanding at the end of Q3.

In line with that, I'm pleased to announce that our Board has approved a new buyback program of up to $150 million.

Now moving to Slide 20. Following the announcement of the Mark II FID and CP's fulfillment, we now have full visibility of our earnings for the next 20 years. This gives us a clear path to cash flow growth and increased shareholder returns.

By 2028, when our 3 FLNG units are fully delivered in operation, we expect our EBITDA to grow by more than 4x compared to the last 12 months. This can grow even further, subject to further commodity upside from Hilli and the Mark II. This incremental free cash flow upside under the SESA charters in Argentina can be estimated at approximately $100 million per year for every dollar per million Btu increase in FOB prices above $8 per million Btu.

In 2028, when the Mark II comes online, our free cash flow to equity generation could be around $500 million to $600 million or approximately $5 to $6 a share before further commodity upside.

Now moving to Slide 21. So how do we plan to fund that growth? Going forward, we plan to use the liquidity released from debt financing proceeds to be allocated to fund accretive FLNG growth. We have now received final credit approvals for a new $1.2 billion bank facility for FLNG Gimi at improved terms, and we expect it to close within Q4. This facility carries improved terms and conditions compared to the current one and is expected to release net proceeds of over $400 million net to us.

At 5.6x the Gimi's annual contracted EBITDA, this is a good example of what can be achieved on the back of our long-term charters.

When looking at our existing debt at Hilli and targeting a level of 4x to 5x its annual contracted EBITDA, in that case, even at a lower level than the Gimi one, we could release up to $1 billion in proceeds from that by refinancing the existing debt with a new facility.

Similarly, if we apply the same multiples to the Mark II, which is currently completely unencumbered, we could be looking to raise up to $2 billion from new financings. Combined, these 2 transactions could raise up to $3 billion in fresh proceeds, which can be used to fund further FLNG growth.

Now moving to Slide 22. Following the confirmation of the contracts in Argentina with the FIDs of Hilli and the Mark II, we now have a total firm EBITDA backlog of more than $17 billion before commodity upside and further inflation adjustments. I wanted to recap how this is built up once all units are in operation.

So starting with our share of the Gimi earnings. This is expected to add $150 million, followed by the $285 million from Hilli, as you can see on the slide, and $400 million from the Mark II. When you deduct our corporate expenses, we're left with a base EBITDA of $800 million fully secured for the next 20 years.

As I explained before, changes in LNG prices could significantly give a very high upside to us. And in that case, we have a limited downside with a very significant and uncapped upside.

For example, if we assume FOB LNG prices of $10 per million Btu, our EBITDA could be in excess of $1 billion per year. At $15, this number could grow to $1.5 billion. As a reference, if all the units were in operation in '22 and assuming LNG prices during that time, we could be earning close to $3.5 billion in that given year. This really shows the huge upside potential of our commodity upside.

So lastly, on Slide 23, I wanted to summarize the different ways our investors can have exposure to Golar.

Our shares are listed on NASDAQ, and I'm pleased to see increased volumes with daily liquidity exceeding $50 million per day. Following our latest issuance of our new U.S. rated $500 million unsecured bonds in October, we now have 2 unsecured bonds trading in the market with a total outstanding amount of $800 million.

We have also issued $575 million of convertible bonds back in June. So I think that ends this slide here. I'll now hand the call back to you, Karl.

Thanks, Eduardo. Turning to Slide 25 to summarize. We're very pleased with the development of the quarter and in particular, 2025 year-to-date. We remain the only proven service provider of FLNG as-a-service, combined between Hilli and Gimi having now delivered more than 150 LNG cargoes.

Our earnings backlog now stands at $17 billion of EBITDA before commodity upside and inflationary adjustments. This will further increase as we add additional units. Our EBITDA is set to quadruple between now and 2028, and the pathway to multiple return in shareholder returns is beyond the quadruple as the EBITDA growth is far in excess of debt service growth.

We remain a strong balance sheet position to provide for additional growth units.

Our fully delivered net debt-to-EBITDA stands at around 3.4x with a current cash position of around $1 billion.

We're on track to order our fourth FLNG unit, and we're in the process of ordering long lead items during this quarter.

Our focus remains on shareholder returns, and we're pleased that the Board approved yesterday a new $150 million buyback program, which is in line with the $812 million returned to shareholders in the last 5 years. That concludes the prepared remarks of today's presentation. I'm happy to turn the call back to the operator for any questions.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Chris Robertson from Deutsche Bank Securities.

Just we saw some correlation in the share price recently with some -- with the Argentine market due to the recent election cycle. And one of the things that could help reduce the market's perception of risk around Argentina, perhaps if SESA is able to lock in long-term offtake agreements. So I was wondering if you could comment on SESA's current strategy, what they're currently doing if they're out competing in the market for long-term offtake sale purchase agreements and where things stand on that front?

We've observed the same, which is interesting. I think we tried to explain the structure of our contracts on Slide 5 in this deck. These contracts are for 20-year durations, and we've structured them independent of political parties. We subjectively are pleased to see the outcome of the election. However, our contracts -- the FID for the Mark II was taken before the outcome of the election.

And we do not think that it would have any material impact on our earnings irrespective of outcome. But subjectively, we're pleased to see the development.

To answer your question on long-term offtake, that's a SESA decision. We are obviously shareholders of SESA. So the current plan is to initially lock in the offtake for the Hilli volumes for a decent period of time. And we're pleased to see the activity level and interest for that offtake. As earlier explained, the world is looking to diversify sources of LNG and the attractiveness of Argentina sitting on the world's second largest shale discovery is very interesting because it will be a long-term and very significant exporter of LNG for the coming decades.

So we see very strong interest from all the big industrial and trading houses for that volume. We do expect them to sign the first offtake contracts within this quarter.

Great. Just turning to the donor vessels at the moment, they seem to be relatively cheap. That being said, there's a little bit of cost inflation as you probably saw here on long lead items and also from the shipyards just being relatively full. So with that in mind, can you comment if the future projects could target a similar potential CapEx to EBITDA ratio of 5.5x, as you noted in the slides here? Or is that calculation a bit different with recent costs? And if you could comment on where total CapEx stands today on some of the new potential projects?

I think it's fair to say that the topside equipment, the topside equipment cost inflation and construction time offsets the saving of the donor vessel and more so. The cost inflation pressure is higher than what you save on the ship, even if they do partly net off each other, but stronger pressure on the upside to put it that way. However, we're pleased to see that, that's also the case for liquefaction fees. And we are planning or targeting to do new projects with similar economics on CapEx to EBITDA ratios versus the existing projects.

And just as a follow-up on that. If you were to move forward with the Mark II having that option at the shipyard, would that be locked in at the similar price of the Fuji? Or has there been some cost inflation that could impact that as well?

It's -- you have a cheaper donor vessel than the Fuji. You have a higher long lead items. But the overall price, I would say, for this context is broadly in line with a slight increase. Broadly in line with the existing Fuji.

Your next question comes from the line of Even Kolsgaard from Clarksons Securities.

So I have a question related to Gimi and the capacity of that ship. I know you answered something similar before and touched upon it in your presentation, but one of your partners is very vocal about the potential raising the nameplate capacity of that ship. I think the specific number is about 10% to 20% above the current nameplate capacity. So do you have any comments or color on that statement? And if it's possible?

Yes. So when you make reference to nameplate, there's a few different numbers. So let's talk about nameplate. The nameplate capacity of Gimi is 2.7 mtpa. The contracted volume is 2.4 mtpa. So when we say that the unit makes $215 million of annual EBITDA, that's with reference to the 2.4 mtpa, which is 90% of the 2.7 mtpa. Is it possible that you can produce more than 2.4 mtpa and up towards 2.7 mtpa? Yes, absolutely. Is it possible that we can produce more than 2.7 mtpa? We are evaluating that through the debottlenecking exercise that I mentioned during the call. That could include upgrading certain equipment. The magnitude in percentages over and beyond 2.7 mtpa, we are not in a position to have a clear stance on today.

The way it works is that if you change one single component, that component itself could be like 15% or 20% production increase, but then you face a bottleneck elsewhere in the liquefaction plant. So it's a knock-on effect, and you need to go through the entire system to really gauge the total potential debottleneck potential. So for now, producing more than 2.4 mtpa, whether that's feasible?

Yes, we think so. It's subject to operations upstream and ambient temperature. Are we -- is it possible to do over the design nameplate? Perhaps, but that's through the debottleneck exercise, and we're not going to commit to any percentages until that exercise is done.

Okay. So my second one is on the market for FLNGs. As you've said, there has been a growing numbers of LNGs and interest in that market. But we also see new companies that are doing FLNGs like Delfin LNG and Amigo LNG. And these companies are private, so we don't really know much about the CapEx or contract structures that they get for the tollings, et cetera. But do you have any information when it comes to how does these units compare to yours in terms of competitiveness? And are you also seeing more competition when it comes to potential projects that you are looking at?

So we're pleased to see that more people adopt FLNG technology. I don't think I want to go into any of the specific projects that you mentioned, but we're pleased to see increased adoption. I think it's still fair to say that there are more PowerPoint FLNG companies than real FLNG companies. But even including the projects that you mentioned, none of them are offering FLNG as a service. All of them are utilizing gas that they control or in areas where they control. They're not offering this to an upstream partner -- an external upstream partner.

So do we see increased competition for shipyard slots and long leads? Yes. Some of that is not driven by FLNGs. It's by AI data centers, it's by container ships, it's by LNG ships, but it's also FLNGs for sure. Do we see competition for FLNG as a service right now? No.

Your next question comes from the line of Spiro Dounis from Citi.

First question, I wanted to hit quickly on the buyback. The buyback was linked to those notes you did early this summer. Curious how you're thinking about deploying this program and what metrics you'll be looking at each quarter to decide how much you're going to repurchase?

Spiro, this is Eduardo here. So as we stated during the call, over the last 4.5 years, we bought back over 9.3 million shares. I think we have taken a pretty opportunistic approach to that. Following the convertible bonds, we bought back 2.5 million shares and the previously approved program had then been exhausted. So I think we have received approval yesterday from the Board for a new program of up to $150 million, which we will continue to actively and opportunistically execute in the market in the coming months. I think we will not change our approach to buybacks as we have been consistently doing over the last 4.5 years.

Got it. So that's great to hear. Second question, maybe just moving to the fourth FLNG unit. Curious if you could put a finer point on maybe some of the gating items here to moving forward. I realize you talked about some of them, but you also mentioned going back to potential customers you had spoken to before. Curious how big that list is and maybe why they're stronger candidates now versus not prior?

So well, the list of existing clients is very obvious. It's Perenco, BP, Kosmos and the SESA partnership. I think we're obviously with Hilli departing in Cameroon. Cameroon has more gas reserves that are currently not being monetized. The day we leave, there will be no LNG exports from Cameroon. I think we have a proven operating model there. It's been a very successful partnership across all the parties, and we would be pleased to continue to work in Cameroon if we can find the right resource and agree the right terms. I think for the GTA project, many options are being evaluated to enhance the unit economics of that project, which could include increased liquefaction capacity.

In Argentina, there's an expressed interest to continue to grow exports. I think as late as yesterday, there was an announcement between YPF, Eni and XRG. We -- so those are obviously the existing clients. There were other clients that were -- or other prospective clients that we're competing for the Mark II and Hilli. Some of them have now developed further since sort of losing has to the Argentinians last year and have gotten gas approvals, export rights and so forth that make the project more mature and more positioned to lock in an FLNG. So those are the ones we develop in addition to the continuous business development our BD team continues to develop.

And some of them are in areas we're currently not operating in as well. And we do see strong demand pull, obviously, from West Africa and South America, but it would be interesting to see if it would be possible to open other areas as well that we're currently in discussions for.

Your next question comes from the line of John Mackay from Goldman Sachs.

Maybe I'll just pick up on that last one. It sounds like you are lining up for a fourth vessel order effectively before we know exactly where it's going, similar to what you did last time, makes sense. But I guess my question is going with the Mark I or Mark II or Mark III, each of those kind of has a different market where it could end up going. So I was just wondering if you could kind of talk about where you're seeing the commercial opportunities relative to each of those 3 options.

John, so you're right. As we said in the prepared remarks, we are planning to narrow the design in the coming months. The long lead items, the critical long lead items are, in fact, the same or interchangeable between the designs. It's mainly the gas turbine and the cold box. The difference is the magnitude of how many turbines you order for the different designs.

When we make the slot reservation and commitments to the long leads, it is interchangeable. And therefore, the reason for going ahead with that now is that, that's still flexible to design, subject to the deciding design in the next coming months. And that's where we're targeting. Where we see the smaller ones, so the Mark I, that's West Africa business, the way we see it. Mark II is more versatile in terms of geographical or geography. And Mark III effectively currently has 2 projects that we're working on. So that it's fewer projects for Mark II than necessarily for Mark III than the other 2. But yes, so we're now planning to narrow that range to decide on which vessel to go for.

I appreciate that. A quick second one for me. Just can you remind us the status of the pipeline for Argentina, kind of what we should look for next? When we kind of need to see something moving forward? Any updates there?

So there are 2 relevant pipelines. The least cumbersome one is the one that connects the existing grid to the Hilli. That's under construction and very much on track. The one you are referring to is the new pipeline from the Vaca Muerta to the Gulf of San Matias -- that pipeline is a SESA work stream is independent of our contracts because we are paid as long as we're on site and available, irrespective of whether we liquefy or not.

However, it's obviously important for us that, that pipeline is built because that is what speaks to the upside and the overall economics.

SESA is now in an active round where they are auctioning out the EPC contract and/or a tariff-based service agreement, subject to which model they go for. And our understanding is that they expect to enter into a contract and award it in the first half of next year. The construction time of the pipeline is less than 2 years. Hence, that should be well within the timeline for Mark I's arrival. They're also in parallel working on all the regulatory framework needed, including right-of-way RIGI protection and so forth. The good thing is that the absolute majority of the distance, the pipeline will go next to the oil pipeline that was approved last year.

Hence, right-of-way is already -- that path has already been laid because you can just go exactly next to it. So we think this is a repeat, and we understand that SESA is happy with the engagement from the potential EPC providers of that pipeline.

Your next question comes from the line of Alexander Bidwell from Webber Research & Advisory.

Just wanted to pick up on just a couple of the previous questions on some of the commercial demand or rather demand for FLNG units. Are there any pockets of demand that surprise you? Any specific regions where you feel commercial discussions have picked up more so than others?

I don't think surprise is the right word. These are very large infrastructure projects that require a lot of stakeholder and a lot of time. So to say that it's surprising, I don't think it's right to characteristic. But what we do see is that as we've said a few times on the call, there's an increasing industry adoption. People are not scared of deploying an FLNG anymore. And it's a bit like if your neighbor has one, you want one, too.

And if you just look at where FLNGs are deployed or being planned to be deployed in terms of contracts already sanctioned and just look at the neighboring countries, they all have pretty much the similar reserves. Why would your neighbor do something and make billions of dollars of LNG cash flows a year when you're not. And that dynamic is now ongoing, stronger than previous because more people are adopting the projects.

Interesting. That's a great analogy. And for my second question, could you talk to, I guess, the key steps to greenlighting and optimization or debottlenecking at on the Gimi? And then once you approve or decide the path forward, could you walk us through how the actual work might be executed? Could there be any potential impact to production, et cetera?

The question is probably just as well placed to BP or Kosmos. But the way this works is it's an interaction, right? So the gas comes is lifted from the ground, then goes through a BP-operated FPSO. Then the gas is sent to the Gimi, then circulated on a hub that's BP operated and then offloaded. So when you talk about debottlenecking, it's not just Gimi. It's the whole process from the gas is lifted until it's loaded onto a ship.

For example, one of the key performance measure of an FLNG is the quality of the gas entering the unit and ambient temperature. Now ambient temperature is a little bit tricky to play around with, but you can do smart things like air inlet cooling and so forth. So when you talk about debottlenecking, it's not just on the FLNG on itself, it's through the value chain and where does each dollar deployed make the maximum output and how do we work together to optimize that output.

So for now, that's the discussion. Maybe you can tweak the gas treatment on the FPSO to send a more optimized gas stream to the FLNG and thereby increase throughput, as an example, right?

So the work we are currently discussing does not require any movement of Gimi -- she stays where she is. It might entail maintenance shutdown of the trains, but you never shut down all 4. You just do like shut down a train for 1 week, maybe do certain upgrades or change some of the equipment to get that back up and running before you do the next one. And that would obviously be in accordance with the upstream to boost output.

And the NPV of that would be massively positive if nobody is incentivized to do it because it's working today. So this is an opportunity set, which could benefit everybody.

Your next question comes from the line of Liam Burke from B. Riley Securities.

You're talking about future projects, and you pretty much have an idea of what the cost of the FLNG is. When you're looking at the implicit returns on that project, are you looking at just tolling agreements? Or do you factor in some sort of commodity premium on the cash flow generation of future LNGs?

The latter. So to explain, we do not want to be in any project if the cash breakeven of the project is not competitive. Then it's a partnership that sets up for failure over time. And by competitive, we mean competitive to U.S. exports.

So the way we try to structure the project is to charge what we think is a fair but also attractive to Golar firm tolling part and then a commodity upside if the achieved FOB price significantly overshoots the cash breakeven of the project.

In that way, we can make a project with an attractive cash breakeven to all the stakeholders and aligned structure on making money together if and when gas prices go up.

The only thing we know is over the next 20 years, nobody knows where the gas price is going. It will be volatile. So it's important to have an attractive cash breakeven and capture the upsides when they're there.

Great. In terms of the Gimi operational efficiencies and debottlenecking, are you gleaning anything from that process that can help you on future FLNG projects?

Yes. So if you look at our units, they're getting more efficient. The Gimi is more -- slightly more efficient than the Hilli Mark II is quite a bit more efficient than the Gimi, both in terms of fuel consumption, emissions, water intake, many different things. So we're constantly adopting technology advances. Like think of it as a car. If you bought the Volkswagen Golf 5 years ago and you ordered a new one now, it looks very similar, but it's got a nicer radio, better sound system and whatever else it has, better headlights. It's the same car, but it's nicer.

I'll be sure to consider that when looking at the golf.

We will take our final question. The final question comes from the line of Sherif Elmaghrabi from BTIG.

So the buyback program was reloaded in Q3. And in the past, you've shown some flexibility regarding how to reinvest in the company. So my question is, how are you thinking about shareholder returns through buybacks versus that outstanding 30% interest in the Gimi given where the stock is today?

That's for us -- so the $150 million is set for share buybacks, right? When it comes to the Gimi, that's obviously -- the 30% stake is owned by Keppel Capital. If that can be acquired accretive to where we can do other FLNG growth and/or where we are trading on the market, we will, for sure, consider it. If not, we don't need to buy it.

Got it. And then turning to the fleet. If we fast forward a year and you secured a contract for a fourth FLNG, but the order book for gas turbines has obviously grown. Do you have a sense of how that affects delivery timelines for a fifth unit? Is it a few months more than I think you said up to 48 months for Mark III, for example?

Okay. To just give you an example, up until June this year, the delivery time for a gas turbine was 24 months. In June, some of these are down to almost single suppliers. In June, one of these suppliers sent a letter to all its clients saying lead times just went from 34 months -- to 24 months to 36 months. So that's a 1-year delay. If you're an existing client and you have an existing program, maybe you can sneak in the middle there somewhere. But you're talking significant potential delays unless you lock in the long leads, which is why we're going ahead now because in developing these projects, you need to know when you start up to drive commercial value. And if you keep letting the critical items slide, even if the shipyard is ready on everything else, if you can't get the topside equipment there, you don't get the ship.

This concludes today's question-and-answer session. I will now hand back for closing remarks.

Thank you all for dialing in. As we said, we're now in Bermuda. Eduardo and I will head to New York later today and hope to see some of you there over the course of today and tomorrow. Other than that, thank you for listening in, and we're pleased to stay in touch. Thank you.

Have a good day.

Thank you.

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