CNX Resources (NYSE:CNX) released first-quarter financial results and hosted an earnings call on Thursday. Read the complete transcript below.

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The full earnings call is available at https://event.choruscall.com/mediaframe/webcast.html?webcastid=Uxdr1R4G

Summary

CNX Resources is continuing its Utica development, with recent well performance aligning with expectations, but detailed production data will be available later in the year.

The company is maintaining a focus on the Marcellus due to existing infrastructure benefits, though a gradual increase in Utica development is anticipated.

CNX Resources remains on track with its new tech business initiatives, with no significant updates and awaiting final guidance on 45Z.

The company has made a positive refinancing move for its 2029 notes with new eight-year notes, maintaining a strategy of extending maturity profiles.

Management expressed optimism about increasing in-basin demand, with expectations of significant gas demand growth in the Appalachian region.

Full Transcript

OPERATOR

Good day and welcome to the CNX Resources First Quarter 2026 Question and Answer Conference Call. All participants will be in listen only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to hand the call to Tyler Lewis, Senior Vice President of Finance and Treasurer. Please go ahead.

Tyler Lewis (Senior Vice President of Finance and Treasurer)

Thank you and good morning, everybody. Welcome to CNX's first quarter Q&A conference call. Today we will be answering questions related to our first quarter results. This morning we posted to our investor relations website an updated slide presentation and detailed first quarter earnings release data such as quarterly EP data, financial statements and non GAAP reconciliations which can be found in a document titled Q1 2026 Earnings Results and supplemental information of CNX Resources. Also, we posted to our investor relations website our prepared remarks for the quarter, which we hope everyone had a chance to read before the call, as the call today will be used exclusively for Q&A. With me today for Q&A are Alan Shepard, our President and Chief Executive Officer, Everett Good, our Chief Financial Officer, and Navneet Bell, our Chief Operating Officer. Please note that the company's remarks made during this call, including answers to questions, include forward looking statements which are subject to various risks and uncertainties. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and our actual results may differ materially as a result of many factors. A discussion of risks and uncertainties related to those factors in CNX's business is contained in its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and in the release issued today. With that, thank you for joining us this morning and operator, can you please open the call up for Q&A at this time?

OPERATOR

We will now begin the question and answer session. As a reminder to ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, you will need to pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press Star then two. And our first question will come from Leo Mariani of Roth. Please go ahead.

Leo Mariani (Equity Analyst at Roth)

Yeah, hi, good morning. I was hoping to hear a little bit more about the Utica. I see you guys brought three wells on, you know, here in the first quarter. Any comments on kind of, well, performance or costs? I know you've been working hard to kind of continue to improve the play over time, so just wanted to see if there was kind of an update there.

Alan Shepard (President and Chief Executive Officer)

Hey Leo, you know. No, good question. We are continuing to develop the Utica program there. The most recent pad was a recently towards the last part of the quarter. So we're a little ways off from providing any sort of production results from that. Everything we've seen so far, you know, as we've mentioned on previous calls, very, very consistent with what our expectation of the reservoir is. And we're continuing sort of to make progress on the cost side, but nothing new to update at this time. You know, the way to think about it is probably towards the end of this year we'll be in a position to provide a more fulsome update. We'll have a nice data set to provide to the market towards the end of 2026, early 2027, once these wells have had enough duration on them.

Leo Mariani (Equity Analyst at Roth)

Okay, and would you envision that as you guys develop a more robust data set if the play continues to progress nicely, could we see a little bit more allocation to the Utica versus the Marcellus in the next few of years or do you guys think that the Marcellus still is probably going to be a little bit economically superior based on kind of the current rate?

Alan Shepard (President and Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah, I think the Marcellus has the advantage of having the infrastructure already there. Right. So we optimize for kind of the best economics per well. Right. And right now the SWP of the Marcellus, you don't need to build new infrastructure for the most part because all the legacy investment there. So you will see us kind of blended more Utica over time. That's sort of the longer term position for the company, but definitely the SWP of the Marcellus. We're in harvest mode there and you're going to continue to see those for the next few years. Okay, that's helpful for sure.

Leo Mariani (Equity Analyst at Roth)

And I just wanted to ask kind of your new tech business here, any kind of updates there on any updates on the other business lines beyond environmental and credit monetization and what you guys have been consistently doing, specifically anything on auto sep or anything on like CNG or LNG business you guys have mentioned in the past?

Alan Shepard (President and Chief Executive Officer)

No, I think everything's consistent with where we thought it'd be at this point in 26. We're still waiting for sort of the final guidance on Section 45Z, but we don't think that's going to impact the projections we've made so far. So nothing new to update there, Leo.

Leo Mariani (Equity Analyst at Roth)

Okay, thank you.

OPERATOR

The next question comes from Jacob Roberts of tph. Please go ahead.

Jacob Roberts (Equity Analyst at tph)

Good morning hey, good morning. On hedging, you guys are typically transacting on a longer term basis than a lot of your peers. So given what seems to be the prevailing theory of an improving gas base in that sort of 2028 plus time frame, can you give some context on what you're seeing in that 2028 market? I think you added another 13Bcf to the book with this update. Just curious what you're seeing on that longer dated market at the moment.

Alan Shepard (President and Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah, yeah. Again on our longer term hedges, we're certainly in a position to be more opportunistic maybe than we have in the past impatient. So as we see that price move up and we've seen basis differentials tighten as well and that's really helped us get to a better all in realized price in kind of the Cal 2028 market. So we're targeting to bring that up over time as we, as we approach that year.

Jacob Roberts (Equity Analyst at tph)

Okay, perfect. I appreciate that. And then just kind of, you know, I know you made some, some changes to the balance sheet. Just curious what the next steps are from here on that front.

Alan Shepard (President and Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah, we did a very positive refinancing of our 2029 notes at new eight-year notes at 5.875% in the quarter. I mean generally we've been very consistent in that we try to push out the maturities to make sure that we're at least two, three years out before our next maturity. So the next one up for us is a 2030 maturity that we'll handle well ahead of time. It's all about keeping the maturity profile extended and making sure that we don't have particular periods where you have large maturity towers in front of us.

Jacob Roberts (Equity Analyst at tph)

Thanks, I appreciate the time. Thank you

OPERATOR

again. If you would like to ask a question, please press star then one. And our next question will come from Michael Scala of Stevens. Please go ahead.

Michael Scala (Equity Analyst at Stevens)

Hi, good morning, wanted to ask. Morning. I wanted to ask on in-basin demand, some of your competitors are becoming a lot more confident on that. Talking about that growing by more than 10 Bcf per day by the end of the decade. Want to see if you share that enthusiasm and anything you can share with us that the company may be doing to capture some of that demand.

Alan Shepard (President and Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah, no, I would agree that, you know, we certainly see the same sort of long term optimism on the demand side. You know, some of the announcements that come out are sort of mind-boggling. Right. When you think about a 9-gigawatt power center plant, there's been multiple of those proposed. So we're like everyone Else. Right. We see the announcements and we're watching monitoring as RFPs come out for gas supply. We're participating in those. The magnitude of gas that's going to be demanded in-basin and Appalachia is going to need to be sourced by multiple producers. And if you think about the folks like ourselves that have the resource depth and sort of the credit worthiness to enter into long term arrangements with these new demand sources, we're certainly going to benefit from that. So yeah, we would share that optimism. The only question in my mind is time, right? Is it three years, is it five years, is it seven years?

Michael Scala (Equity Analyst at Stevens)

Alan, do you see that developing more on the Ohio side? It looks like it's maybe ahead of Pennsylvania. And can you participate as much over there if that is the case?

Alan Shepard (President and Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah, I think, you know, for an Appalachian producer, just given the interconnectedness of the pipes, we're pretty agnostic to where it develops. You know, you can wheel gas around here between the states pretty easily. You know, just as a sort of macro observation, Ohio has shown itself to be a little easier to do business with in terms of speed. It's a little bit flatter over there too for some of the data centers and they have some of the intersection points with the long haul pipelines like Clarington that make it very attractive. You know, Pennsylvania is also being competitive though. I mean you got the Homer City plant here and the next Terra projects that they're still working on site selection but have indicated they're going to be in the Mon Valley area. Those are certainly being our footprint. But bigger picture, like I said, we're agnostic. We're just excited about the growth in band and as Everett mentioned, you're starting to see differentials tighten up in the out years and we hope that trend continues.

Michael Scala (Equity Analyst at Stevens)

Yep, got it. Wanted to ask on your convertible notes, can you say when during the quarter you expect that remaining? I think it's 209 million to convert. Just trying to estimate the diluted share count for the second quarter.

Alan Shepard (President and Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah, that maturity is on May 1, so this week. So those shares will be issued about approximately 12 million shares, net issuance later this week. Yeah, we say net. That's included the effect of the capped call option that we structured when we entered into the converts. So the 12 is the net out the door.

Michael Scala (Equity Analyst at Stevens)

Great, thank you, Appreciate it.

OPERATOR

This concludes our question and answer session. I'd like to turn the call over to Tyler Lewis for any closing remarks.

Tyler Lewis (Senior Vice President of Finance and Treasurer)

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

Disclaimer: This transcript is provided for informational purposes only. While we strive for accuracy, there may be errors or omissions in this automated transcription. For official company statements and financial information, please refer to the company's SEC filings and official press releases. Corporate participants' and analysts' statements reflect their views as of the date of this call and are subject to change without notice.