Expand Energy (NASDAQ:EXE) reported third-quarter financial results on Wednesday. The transcript from the company’s third-quarter earnings call has been provided below.
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Summary
Expand Energy transformed from an upstream gas producer to an integrated gas company, with significant focus on commercial capabilities and the Twin Eagle acquisition.
The marketing business is expected to add $0.12 per Mcfe to the fourth-quarter margin despite low commodity prices, with strong operational results and a robust balance sheet.
The company allocated $305 million to share repurchases in Q3 and named Danny Brown as the new CEO, emphasizing leadership and capital allocation expertise.
Future outlook includes capturing value from rising natural gas demand, leveraging Twin Eagle for marketing synergies, and maintaining flexibility with production aligned with market conditions.
Management remains optimistic about long-term shareholder value creation, with strategic initiatives in place to capitalize on LNG and industrial demand growth.
Full Transcript
OPERATOR
Thank you for standing by and welcome to Expand Energy’s third quarter 2026 earnings conference call. Currently, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker’s presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone. To remove yourself from the queue, you may press star 11 again. I would now like to hand the call over to Brittany Rayford, Vice President, Treasurer and Investor Relations.
Please go ahead.
Brittany Rayford (Vice President, Treasurer and Investor Relations)
Thank you. Good morning, everyone.
Mike Wichterich (Interim CEO and Chairman of the Board)
Good morning and thanks for joining our call. So last quarter I discussed my optimism about the future of Expand. Today, that optimism continues to grow and is stronger than ever. You can feel momentum building across our organization. Over the past nine months we have transformed Expand from an upstream gas producer into an integrated gas company that is a leading producer and marketer of gas coast to coast across North America. While our upstream business remains our foundation, this year we’re focused on strengthening our commercial capabilities by adding key leaders in both the C-suite and across the organization.
We’ve expanded our corporate and business development efforts to consider opportunities across the whole gas value chain to include upstream, marketing and LNG. That decision proved to be a good one as last quarter the team delivered the Twin Eagle acquisition, bringing exceptional talent and valuable customer relationships to Expand. With the transaction now closed, the Twin Eagle and Expand teams are working side by side in one office to deliver the synergies we promised.
We see significant opportunities ahead and look forward to sharing our progress and successes over the coming quarters. Today we are demonstrating exactly why an integrated gas company matters. Low commodity prices are pressuring free cash flow margins for many of our peers. However, at Expand, our marketing business is already making a difference. The combined Expand and Twin Eagle marketing profits are expected to add $0.12 per Mcfe to our fourth quarter margin. This is particularly impressive because the team is expecting to generate solid profits in an anticipated low-price, low-volatility period.
As prices rise and volatility returns, we are well positioned to capture even more value. Through all this change, our team never took its eye off creating long-term shareholder value. We continue to deliver strong operational results, producing approximately 7.5 BCFE per day this quarter and extended our drilling inventory through organic leasing, which remains one of the most accretive ways to add high-quality locations. We have allocated more to share repurchases this year than any of our peers, including 305 million in the third quarter.
Our hedging program, which we see as a critical risk management tool, improved our realized prices by 46 cents per Mcfe and, importantly, our balance sheet remains strong with net debt of 4.7 billion and leverage of 0.8 times. Finally, we said we would name a permanent CEO within nine months and we kept our promise. I’m excited to be joined today by our new CEO, Danny Brown. The board was deliberate in its choice, focused on finding the right leader to continue our momentum. First and foremost, we wanted a leader with a proven record of building a team-oriented culture that focuses on creating long-term shareholder value. Given our 3 billion annual capital plan, we wanted an upstream expert who has experience managing a large portfolio of assets.
And we wanted a former public CEO who understands our shareholders’ perspective and is a great allocator of capital and can consistently deliver. We found all that in Danny and we believe our patience was rewarded. We do not consider our mission accomplished, but we have built the foundation. We now have a premier upstream business, a coast-to-coast marketing platform, a strong balance sheet and a team that plays to win. We have attacked opportunities to improve our business with urgency while maintaining our disciplined approach to value creation. And above all else, we keep our promises. I could not be more impressed with this team nor more optimistic about Expand’s future.
I’m excited to watch Danny and the team build on this momentum. With that, I am pleased to turn the call over to Danny for a few brief remarks on what is the start of his third day leading our company.
Danny Brown (Chief Executive Officer)
Thank you, Mike. And thank you as well for the confidence you and the board have placed in me to lead this organization. And I’d also like to take a moment and thank the Cord Energy team. I’m proud of what we built and accomplished there together and have full expectation that Cord will continue delivering for its stakeholders. As I turn my full attention to Expand, I will say that I was drawn to this opportunity because I believe Expand has built something that’s unique and that is very well suited to deliver value for its shareholders in a differentiated fashion. First, we have meaningful scale, which is tremendously important in any commodity business and particularly one that is as dynamic as natural gas. Second, we have inventory-rich assets which are diversified and adjacent to key demand centers.
Third, we have resiliency with an investment grade balance sheet, low breakevens, operational flexibility and a disciplined hedging strategy. And now with Twin Eagle, we have a direct line to customers which should allow Expand to capture incremental margin along the value chain. And all of this set against the precipice of a structural increase in natural gas demand, with rising needs for LNG, data centers, industrial projects and broad-scale electrification.
The foundation is set. Now it’s time to execute and leverage the platform that has been created to deliver differentiated value for our shareholders. And while I’ve only been here for a few short days, it’s clear to me that this team shares the commitment to excellence in all aspects of our business, which is critical to sustainable value creation in this industry. I’m honored to be a member of this talented team and I’m excited to be getting started and, as I do, I look forward to connecting with all of you.
And now, Operator, we’re ready for questions. And before we go into questions, I’d like to turn the call over to Brittany Rayford, Vice President, Treasurer and Investor Relations, with forward-looking statements.
Brittany Rayford (Vice President, Treasurer and Investor Relations)
Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining our call this morning to discuss Expand Energy’s 2026 third quarter financial and operating results. Hopefully you’ve had a chance to review our press release and updated investor presentation that we posted to our website yesterday. During this morning’s call we will be making forward-looking statements, which consist of statements that cannot be confirmed by reference to existing information, including statements regarding our beliefs, goals, expectations, forecasts, projections and future performance, and the assumptions underlying such statements. Please note that there are a number of factors that will cause actual results to differ materially from our forward-looking statements, including the factors identified and discussed in our press release yesterday and other SEC filings.
Please recognize that, except as required by law, we undertake no duty to update any forward-looking statements and you should not place undue reliance on such statements. We may also refer to some non-GAAP financial measures which help facilitate comparisons across periods and with peers. For any non-GAAP measure we use, a reconciliation to the nearest corresponding GAAP measure can be found on our website. With me today on the call are Mike Wichterich and Danny Brown, who you’ve already heard prepared remarks from, as well as Josh Viets and Marcel Teunissen. Operator, with that you can please turn the line over for questions.
OPERATOR
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone. To remove yourself from the queue, you may press star 11 again. We ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up to allow everyone the opportunity to participate. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Neil Mehta of Goldman Sachs. Your line is open. Neil.
Neil Mehta (Analyst at Goldman Sachs)
Danny, congratulations on the role, and Mike, congratulations on completing the process. Danny, just maybe you can provide some perspective of what attracted you to the opportunity. What of your past experiences, whether at Anadarko or Cord over the years, do you think is most transferable over to the Expand opportunity set? And how are you approaching the first 100 days on the job?
Danny Brown (Chief Executive Officer)
Well, thanks, Neil. I’m super excited to be here. You know, I’d say, as I indicated in my prepared remarks, I really see that Expand has built an amazing platform over here and against the backdrop of something that could be really special. So I think it’s set up with the right assets in the right places to just benefit from this structural increase in demand that we see coming. And that was something that I think is very, very exciting, and I’m very excited to be a part of it.
So really that’s why I’m here. With respect to my background and the skills I’ve got, I’d say, you know, over many years I gained skills in capital allocation, allocating capital against multiple different basins, allocating capital against projects with very different cash flow streams and risk profiles. And so that’s something that I’m comfortable with. And over at Cord, I would say, you know, we focused a lot on delivering value every day for our shareholders.
And clearly I learned a lot of skills around leadership writ large and leading larger public organizations. And so all of that, I think, combines well for the place that Expand’s at right now and the opportunities we see in front of us. So I just couldn’t be more excited to be here and I’m very, very eager to dig in and work with the team to deliver on what we see as amazing potential within this organization.
Neil Mehta (Analyst at Goldman Sachs)
Congratulations, Danny. And then the follow-up, this one might be for Marcel. Just on the commercial mandate that the team has set out here, whether it’s the $0.20 NEM or trying to get more aggressive around marketing and commercial deals. Where do you think you are in the journey and what areas or customers are you most focused on right now? Is it LNG? Is it data centers? Is it industrial customers like steel? Just help us get into your thought process around this.
Marcel Teunissen (Chief Financial Officer)
Yeah, thanks, Neil, for the question. So we closed the Twin Eagle acquisition September 16th, so we had two weeks of that under our belt by the end of the quarter. Of course, we’re a couple of weeks further down and very much focused on integrating the plumbing of that business with ours. As Mike already mentioned, the team from Twin Eagle has moved into our offices, which is a great start. The organizations have been aligned and we’re doing some of the work in the back office.
As you can imagine, the early opportunities there are really pretty evident from customer feedback. Whether they’re on our side or on the original Twin Eagle side, we see lots of opportunities. And that supports the thesis that we’ve had and the synergies and the integration value. We’ve guided for Q4 to $80 million, kind of in a low-volatility environment. For our combined marketing and commercial business, including Twin Eagle, that translates to about $0.12 per MCF.
What we’ve also laid out is with the synergies, we have good line of sight to get the total number for marketing and commercial up to $500 million by 2028. That translates to about $0.20 per MCF. And as we continue to look at the LNG opportunity, we’re very active in that. As we said before, we will be thoughtful about making sure that we get the right opportunities first in liquefaction, but also how we structure our sales portfolio. That will come a little bit after 2028, and that ultimately gets us $150 million of additional EBITDA for our marketing and commercial business.
And that translates to about $0.30 per MCF on our current production. So we feel good about the progress we’ve made. The Twin Eagle integration is going well. We’ll provide more details once we have a real quarter under our belt after Q4.
Neil Mehta (Analyst at Goldman Sachs)
Thanks, Marcel. And on that question about the logical end customers, LNG, data centers, or industrial, is there one that you’re leaning into?
Marcel Teunissen (Chief Financial Officer)
Yeah, kind of all of the above. Of course, LNG—and we’ve laid it out—that is really where the demand step-up is coming from. And we’re already supplying a lot of LNG, particularly out of our Haynesville assets. Of course, today that is going to continue to grow as we get to the back end of ’27, into ’28, and up to the 2030s. That’s providing that structural demand. Data centers—numerous conversations with data centers. And they’re not just in Appalachia; they are throughout the country. We see them in the Midwest, we see them in Texas, we see them in Louisiana. And we have conversations with all of those as we go.
And there’s this piece around where we talked about industrial demand, which is ongoing. The Twin Eagle team has given us great access to it. They already have a pretty big C&I book where they have those relationships. And it is really a characteristic of a premium market. Some of these commercial and industrial customers, they just pay more because they’re often off the beaten path. They’re not on a main pipeline, and to them gas is just one factor in their overall production cost.
And it’s a relationship business, and that’s what we have acquired with Twin Eagle, and they’re good at it.
Neil Mehta (Analyst at Goldman Sachs)
Thanks, Marcel.
OPERATOR
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Doug Leggett of Wolfe Research. Your line is open, Doug.
Doug Leggett (Analyst at Wolfe Research)
Thank you. Good morning everyone. Danny, it’s great to get you back. So congratulations on joining Expand Energy. I’m going to ask this question as delicately as I can, and it’s probably to Mike, but Mike, you had talked about—you emphasized the need to be in the flow for trading, for AI, for LNG, for all the things that can be more of a commercial endeavor. Why was Danny the right fit to lead that? And whoever wants to offer their perspective, I’d appreciate that.
My follow-up is related, if I may, and it really relates to the Twin Eagle organization and the contribution to Neil’s question to the breakeven. Where is it now? Where do you think it can get to with Twin Eagle as part of the portfolio? I’ll leave it there. Thank you.
Mike Wichterich (Interim CEO and Chairman of the Board)
Sure. This is Mike and I’ll start. So, you know, why Danny? I think you have to think about the journey at Expand Energy. We started in February looking to expand our commercial capabilities. We always said from the very beginning we were thinking about it in a team perspective and not an individual perspective. So we went at that. We ended up adding Marcel, of course, that integrated gas experience with Shell. Then we ended up with the Twin Eagle team who has tremendous commercial capabilities.
So once you have the commercial side set and organization built to get deal flow, then it started to think about our base business. Our base business is a $3 billion capital business. We wanted an expert who understood that business. Danny filled that role. We wanted someone who is a team builder. Danny had already built teams successfully and has a great following. And then we wanted the CEO to continue our momentum, and the person to do that is a person who is already a CEO.
Danny’s not learning the job of CEO. He learned the job of executing, creating shareholder value. So when you put those together, it seemed like a great fit for us and we’re super pleased. Marcel, you want to take a second? Yeah.
Marcel Teunissen (Chief Financial Officer)
Let me follow your question on breakeven. So including dividends, our cash breakeven is about $2.80 or so per MCF. The $0.20 up to $0.30 as we develop our marketing and commercial business will bring that number down. I think maybe the other way to also talk about the resiliency of that marketing and commercial cash flow—so if you look back over the last four quarters, our free cash flow, adjusted free cash flow per MCF, was about a dollar. So think of that $0.20 to $0.30 as an addition to that, a ratable addition to that.
And that makes that cash flow that we generate as a business a lot more resilient. So one, it’s reducing the breakeven, and the other is it’s making our free cash flow and our delivery just more resilient as well.
Doug Leggett (Analyst at Wolfe Research)
So really sorry, Marcel. So where do you see the breakeven when you’ve fully integrated Twin Eagle in terms of the synergies?
Marcel Teunissen (Chief Financial Officer)
Yeah. So we go to $2.50 to $2.60. So the $2.50 is out when we deliver the $750 run rate on our marketing and commercial, and then the intermediate stop in 2028 will be around $2.60, and that includes dividend.
Doug Leggett (Analyst at Wolfe Research)
Thank you so much, guys. Appreciate you taking my questions.
OPERATOR
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Arun Jayaram of J.P. Morgan Securities. Your line is open, Arun.
Arun Jayaram (Analyst at J.P. Morgan)
Yeah, good morning, Danny. Congratulations on your new role. I wanted to—my first question is a follow-up on Expand Energy’s strategy, kind of managing your upstream volumes and capital allocation in an environment where 2027 could have some headwinds from Super El Niño, some of the Permian supply trends, as well as the fact some of the LNG startups are a little bit more levered to the back end of the year versus what looks to be a much more robust demand picture between ’28 and 2030.
Josh Viets (Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer)
Good morning everyone, this is Josh. Yeah, we would definitely agree with the sentiment around the supply-demand fundamentals. The market is pretty well supplied right now despite seeing record levels of demand. LNG flows are at all-time highs. Power burn through the summer was at record levels despite record levels of renewable generation. So demand is showing up. It’s just that, you know, there’s additional supply that came on to the market late last year.
And then of course you had new Permian egress coming up through the summer, and that is expected to continue to grow. And so that obviously combined with the outlook on winter is suppressing the 2027 curve. And so we’ve definitely been mindful of that. In fact, as we’ve come into the fourth quarter, we’ve ended up reducing some of our activity. That activity reduction, moving from around 12 rigs down to 10, is in direct acknowledgment that the market is weakening. In addition to that, we’ve proven in the past to be highly flexible with how we manage our production volumes. That’s showing up in the third quarter. It’s showing up again here in the fourth quarter with how we manage curtailments.
We pushed out about nine turn-in-lines out of Q3. We’re waiting on those still to think about the optimal time to bring them online. And as we get into 2027, we will also maintain that same level of flexibility through the year. There’s around 13 Bcf a day of new incremental demand that will show up by year-end 2028. And so the demand is coming, and there’s going to need to be a supply push in order to match that. And that should lead to higher prices. And so we’ll continue to be flexible. We really pride ourselves on better aligning production with price, and we’re going to be well positioned to take advantage of that opportunity again.
Arun Jayaram (Analyst at J.P. Morgan)
Yep. And my follow-up is, just starting to think about 2027, your updated guidance outlines, call it, maybe a baseline for capital in calendar ’26 at $3 billion, or $750 million per quarter. I was wondering if you could comment on some of the inflationary pressures you’re seeing in the Haynesville—obviously where you compete maybe for OFS service capacity relative to the Permian and the Appalachia Basin. And do you have any commentary that you could provide on 2027 as we start to dial in some of these inflationary pressures such as diesel and OCTG?
Josh Viets (Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer)
Yeah, sure. I mean, clearly for 2026, the majority of inflation’s been centered around diesel for us. You know, we run a pretty large program. We’ve averaged around 12 rigs for the year running five to six frac crews. You know, a lot of that activity of course gets centered in the Haynesville. Just as a point of reference, we end up burning about 25 million gallons of diesel each year. And so that definitely has added to some of the capital pressures this year.
As we think about 2027, we do start to see a little bit of shift in where we see inflationary pressures. We’ll actually see about a 50% reduction in our diesel usage heading into 2027 as we have more e-fleets coming into the program. But the inflation does start to move around a little bit. Haynesville rig counts are up about 35% year over year. With the movement in oil prices, you see U.S. oil rig counts up around 10% to 12%. And so we do expect to see with that activity some tightening in the pressure pumping market as well as OCTG.
We think those are probably two of the factors that we’re paying the most attention to. And based upon some of our early outlooks for 2027, we could anticipate kind of a low- to mid-single-digit inflationary factor from heading from 2026 into 2027.
Arun Jayaram (Analyst at J.P. Morgan)
That’s super helpful. Thanks.
OPERATOR
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Matthew Perta of TPH Research. Your line is open. Matthew, good morning.
Matthew Perta (Analyst at TPH Research)
Good morning. I just wanted to kick it off on the marketing side of the portfolio. Saw an interesting project announcement from KMI where they’ll be taking Northeast and Haynesville gas into the Southeast at the same time that we’re seeing a ramp in LNG demand and potentially upside to LNG forecasts on the Gulf Coast over the next few years. I was just curious if you might be able to comment on how the market has continued to evolve over the past year as it relates to long-term gas supply agreements on the Gulf Coast.
Dan Turco (Executive Vice President, Marketing & Commercial)
Yeah, hey Matt, I mean I think, you know, what you’re starting to see is the market is responding to the large LNG pull that’s occurring in the U.S. Gulf Coast. And so people, especially as they get into the southeastern markets, are starting to think about supply security. And I think that’s what you’re seeing with the most recent announcement from Kinder Morgan to move gas into the Georgia and Florida markets. And so this is just, I think, a good sign of the strength in demand signals that we’re seeing.
And I think our presence in the U.S. Gulf Coast really positions us to take advantage of the demand pull that we see coming in front of us.
Matthew Perta (Analyst at TPH Research)
And then for my follow up question, just wanted to get your latest thoughts on the Western Haynesville. As we look at some of the state data, it appears that the industry is trending to around a 2 Bcf per thousand lateral foot EUR for some of the more recent vintages of wells. But I’m curious how you all are seeing early-time productivity trends in the basin, how you’re thinking about breakevens for the asset, and then maybe any thoughts on your capital program as you head into 2027 and the long-term resource potential here.
Obviously you’re in at a very low entry price so just wanted to wrap all those things together for the Western Haynesville.
Josh Viets (Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer)
Yeah, Matt, thanks for the question. So if I just kind of recap what we’ve done this year. We have one horizontal production well online. We drilled a second appraisal well about 15 miles to the north. You know, what we have is a resource-dense reservoir. It has a lot of the characteristics you would look for in a shale reservoir in terms of it being significantly over-pressured at a really thick interval. But it’s deep, and when it’s deep, it means it’s going to be more complex to develop.
And so I still think there’s a lot to be learned. And I think we’ve proven through the years with our experience in the Haynesville the ability to go unlock value from these highly complex reservoirs. It is a high-cost reservoir today. It does not compete within our portfolio in the near term, just given the strength of our inventory in Louisiana and really across the entire portfolio for that matter. In terms of how you might kind of peg a breakeven, I think we think about it as this play is going to need greater than $4 gas right now in order to compete. And so we’re happy to be very methodical about how we appraise it. We like the call option that it creates for us, especially in the growing demand that we see across the US Gulf Coast, East Texas, whether that’s LNG, it’s data centers, industrial demand.
We think there’s going to be a call on gas for it. And so we’ll be methodical. We expect to drill probably two wells in 2027 there. The fact that we have the depth of inventory that we do really affords us the flexibility to appraise it and be smart with how we allocate capital in the business over the next couple years.
OPERATOR
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Josh Silverstein of UBS. Your line is open, Josh.
Josh Silverstein (Analyst at UBS)
Thanks for joining, guys, and welcome on board. Danny, Marcel, you had mentioned you were talking to customers kind of across the natural gas value chain. I was curious how those conversations may differ in the Gulf Coast versus Appalachia, and how, with you guys having access to both basins, how those conversations may be evolving. Is it across them, or are they separate? I was curious what the early discussions have been there. Thanks.
Josh Viets (Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer)
Yeah, Josh, this is Josh. The great thing about the Twin Eagle platform is we have access to transportation, supply, customers across the entire North America. And that really is a differentiator. And so it’s all about creating an advantaged supply position and accessing premium markets. And so what I would say is really following where the demand is as opposed to being focused on one basin or another. Twin Eagle has built a great origination team.
They have longstanding relationships with over 1,000 customers. And so we’re continuing to leverage those relationships. You know, we’ve definitely seen a dynamic shift in how those conversations are going. I think existing customers, it’s really about longer-dated contracts with more volumes. I think that’s what Expand Energy has brought. It’s about credit and credibility as they’re engaging these new conversations. And then in addition we’re having new customers show up. And these are larger-name customers that see the strength of our combined platform that we built.
And so, just to respond to your question, this is about accessing new supply and demand across all of North America as opposed to being focused on one particular basin.
Josh Silverstein (Analyst at UBS)
Thanks for that. And then we’re just curious on capital allocation for fourth quarter and into next year post the Twin Eagle acquisition. Obviously debt went up and it seems like you want to go and start working that down. But the stock also has been weak this year and closer towards a 52-week low. How do you balance buybacks, shareholder returns, and debt reduction going to next year?
Marcel Teunissen (Chief Financial Officer)
Thanks. Thanks, Josh. So our capital allocation priorities are, number one, our D&C capital; number two, our dividend; number three, our balance sheet; and number four, what we have left goes to growth opportunities, which could include share buybacks if we see value there. What we said on the second-quarter call is that after the Twin Eagle acquisition, which put some additional debt on the balance sheet, we take a more balanced approach. We want to get our leverage down from where it is now, but at the same time we keep the option open to be opportunistic in share buybacks if we see good value there.
So you should expect us to continue doing that as we go to Q4 and into the early parts of next year.
OPERATOR
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Devin McDermott, Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.
Devin McDermott (Analyst at Morgan Stanley)
Devin here. Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my question, and echo the congrats to Danny. So, as I’m sure you’re aware, a sizable transaction announced between two of your peers earlier this week, and now that you have the management team set at Expand Energy, I would love to hear just your perspectives — Mike, you can take this, or Danny; Marcel, feel free to chime in as well — perspectives on the M&A landscape, both in terms of upstream consolidation or how you would evaluate further opportunities beyond the wellhead like Twin Eagle.
Just contextualize how you’re thinking about the Expand Energy portfolio today and anything else you think you might need to strengthen the integrated platform.
Danny Brown (Chief Executive Officer)
So thanks for the question, Devin. This is Danny. And first I’ll say congrats to EQT and Range on their deal. As I look at Expand Energy, I think we’ve got a great portfolio of assets and opportunities in front of us and really a reach across all of North America. And so I don’t think the transaction announced yesterday really impacts our plans internally. So we’re going to stay focused on what we’re doing over here to deliver value for our shareholders.
More broadly, I would say that while we’re happy with the existing portfolio of assets and opportunities we’ve got, and we’ll be working hard to realize value from that, I’m a big continuous-improvement guy, and that includes improving all aspects of the business, including the portfolio. And so I am sure along those lines we will be open to inorganic opportunities to do that, but we’ll be very disciplined in our focus on that. And when you think about that, anything we do has to make the company better and deliver strong risk-adjusted full-cycle value.
In order for us to do those things and to hit a market-clearing price, it’s clearly going to have to be something that has a lot of synergies that we’re very, very confident that we can capture. So I think that’s how we’ll think about that. Great portfolio. We’ve got a lot of things to do internally, but we’ll stay open to opportunities to improve the business.
Devin McDermott (Analyst at Morgan Stanley)
Got it. Makes a lot of sense. Maybe sticking with the theme on continuous improvement for my follow up, you all have a track record in driving efficiency gains, pushing down the breakeven of the business. In the context of a little bit of inflationary pressure into 2027, maybe this one’s for Josh. Can you talk about some of the items you’re exploring to potentially offset some of those pressures, the outlook for further efficiency gains, and maybe comment on some of the outperformance in well productivity in Southwest PA or Appalachia as well?
Josh Viets (Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer)
Yeah, sure. You know, the way we like to talk about it inside the organization is round one of the integration between Chesapeake and Southwestern was really centered around the Haynesville, and we made a ton of progress. If you think about our results from ’24 and into ’25, we’ve really doubled down on our continuous improvement efforts across our Appalachia business. In fact, when you look at our Southwest Appalachia drilling performance from ’25 to ’26, we’ve seen a 20% improvement in our footage per day.
It’s about a 10% improvement in our cost per foot and our drilling performance, and it’s really just about leveraging the learnings across the entire portfolio and sticking it into that asset. And so I think you’ll continue to see those continuous improvement efforts on the more traditional methods — drilling wells faster, completing wells more efficiently. You know, we continue in our completion designs in the Haynesville as well. We expect to see about a 2% to 3% improvement in well productivity year over year. That’s really taking advantage of the investment that we made in our own sand supply, which again comes with a cost at about one third of what you pay for a commercial ton of sand.
And so we think that is continuing to open up opportunities and improve returns on our overall wells. We continue to find opportunities to exploit artificial intelligence within the business as well, and we see that unlocking additional value in the year to come. So we’ll be excited to talk about that more in the future.
Devin McDermott (Analyst at Morgan Stanley)
Great. Thanks so much.
OPERATOR
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Scott Hanold of RBC. Your line is open, Scott.
Scott Hanold (Analyst at RBC)
Yeah, thanks. If I could maybe play a little bit off the M&A theme and talk about just sort of your organization call it ground game, organic land acquisition activity. It’s been a little bit more robust this year. And can you talk about the opportunity set with that you see next year, and especially as it relates to how you think about the budget overall and where you want to be given the macro backdrop?
Josh Viets (Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer)
Yeah, sure. Scott, this is Josh. This past year, in 2026, we’ll spend about $250 million on organic lease acquisitions. We’ve had a lot of success, and what I love about it is we’re seeing success across all of our operating units, Haynesville, Appalachia alike. We’ve added some incredibly valuable locations this year, highlighting roughly 3,000 acres that we were able to acquire in the state of Pennsylvania up in Bradford County. Those are some of our most competitive locations that we’ll add.
We spent around $15 million acquiring those leases, and we had a rig sitting on the lease within a couple months of taking it, and those wells will come online likely early next year and will end up delivering about a million cubic feet per foot of lateral productivity — some of the most productive wells in the region that we will probably see over the next several years. So highly, highly valuable and accretive locations that we brought in. That ground game is ingrained in us. It’s something that we expect to carry on into next year. And what we love about our financial position and the strength of the balance sheet that we have is we can be opportunistic when others are struggling to find capital to support their development programs. And so we see that as a competitive advantage. The cross-basin reach that we have is the other advantage that we see.
And so we’ll be opportunistic as we head into 2027 with that leasing program.
Scott Hanold (Analyst at RBC)
Okay, so it sounds like a very similar run rate. Maybe next year is a good starting point for us. Okay, thanks. My second follow-up question is just going to Twin Eagle and just thinking about some of the larger, we’ll say more headline type of commercial type of announcements, whether it’s LNG or industrial or whatnot. If you can give us a sense of, with Twin Eagle and your new platform, when should we expect to see some larger, more impactful announcements that you guys could put in place for maybe the longer-term demand growth in gas?
Dan Turco (Executive Vice President, Marketing & Commercial)
Yeah. So as I kind of said, Scott, we are two weeks in at the end of the quarter with the integration, right? But we already see some early signs, so we can give you a more holistic update after we have done the fourth quarter, right. The Twin Eagle business, of course, is a lot of blocking and tackling and small wins there, so we won’t announce every single deal as we go in there. But there’s a portfolio with power customers, there’s a portfolio with C&I customers, as I already talked about.
You add that to the portfolio that we already had at Expand Energy with LNG, power, and other portfolios. So all of that will continue to work that. But the integration value is already pretty, pretty obvious to us. We set for the fourth quarter $80 million of EBITDA of the combined marketing and commercial business, which was our kind of business with the Twin Eagle business. And then in ’27 and ’28, that synergy that we’ve talked about is primarily on the top line, kind of growing business, both getting more money for our molecules out of the Expand system, extending customer relationships on the Twin Eagle side, and with the footprint that we have both in storage and transportation, just to capture more value from volatility when it occurs. And so that’s what’s driving that number ultimately, and you should see that kind of rolling in as we are progressing.
Scott Hanold (Analyst at RBC)
Understood.
OPERATOR
Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Kevin McCurdy of Pickering Energy Partners. Your line is open, Kevin.
Kevin McCurdy (Analyst at Pickering Energy Partners)
Hey, good morning. Maybe we can start with an update on the hedge strategy, which has been very successful this year. With the potential for demand to pick up in late 2027 and 2028, how do you guys kind of think about adding on hedges for that part, for those out quarters? And are you done hedging for the early part of 2027?
Marcel Teunissen (Chief Financial Officer)
That’s a great question. So I think, just on the purpose of our hedge strategy, we’re really trying to protect against the downside while we leave ourselves open to participate in the upside, and that’s been our consistent hedging strategy. The way that we’ve looked at the market earlier in 2026, where we saw the fundamentals kind of being misaligned with the forward strip, we decided to hedge more aggressively both in ’26 as well as into 2027. And you kind of see the result of that in Q3, where prices on strip have been weak, and a hedge program paid over $300 million relative to that.
And that’s kind of the sign of that protection. Then you look into 2027. We’re already 55% hedged for all of 2027 with a 3.65 kind of price on average. So that gives us a downside protection and it gives us the option to choose what we do with production during that year. The way that we roll in the hedges, that’s a bit more tactical. We take a combination of swaps and collars and three-ways to roll that in, and we roll those in progressively so that we don’t pick a price point at any particular point in time and kind of bet that the market won’t move.
So we continue to roll that in and align our view of hedging relative to our view on the fundamentals, but always with an eye on protecting against the downside and leaving the upside open.
Kevin McCurdy (Analyst at Pickering Energy Partners)
Great. I appreciate that. That was a good answer. And as a follow-up, I know we’ve hit the marketing questions quite a few times here, but maybe I’ll just try another one on what line of sight do you have on the $150 million of incremental EBITDA by year in 2028? And any thoughts on exactly how that progresses between now and in ’28?
Marcel Teunissen (Chief Financial Officer)
Yeah, no, let me start with that, and I’ll ask Josh to maybe add. We have a good line of sight, and that just comes from the work that we did during due diligence as we were framing the acquisition itself, as well as the first couple of weeks, which give us a lot of confidence just from customer feedback, from the teams on the ground that are hearing that, as well as what we see. So we feel confident about that number. Maybe, Josh, it’s good to get some additional color from your side.
Josh Viets (Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer)
Yeah, I would just kind of reiterate. I think there’s a high level of confidence in our ability to deliver that, and the exact timing of it I think is a little bit uncertain, but it will roll through over the next two years without a doubt. The conversation and deal flow is high. And so, to Marcel’s point, our origination teams are incredibly busy, trying to identify new customers and add duration and volume to existing contracts. And so, again, we expect the team to be successful and exceed this target is the ultimate goal.
Kevin McCurdy (Analyst at Pickering Energy Partners)
I appreciate that answer. Thank you.
OPERATOR
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Charles Mead of Johnson Rice. Your question please, Charles.
Charles Mead (Analyst at Johnson Rice)
Yes, good morning, Danny and Mike, and to the rest of the Expand Energy team there. Danny, I want to kind of go back to, I think, the first question you fielded, and I recognize that this is day three on the job, but I’m thinking about you’ve had a window, a non-op window, to look in on Marcellus operations for at least the last two years at your former seat. So when I think about your assets in your former seat and Expand Energy assets, obviously they’re both U.S. onshore, unconventional, but within that framework, they seem to me like they’re at opposite ends of the spectrum on kind of maturity, runway, macro dynamics, that sort of thing.
So I’m curious, are there any, or can you identify any, kind of practices or philosophies that you developed and found useful in the Bakken that would be new or different for Expand Energy?
Danny Brown (Chief Executive Officer)
Well, it’s good to hear from you, Charles, and thanks for the question. You know, I’d say as I think about my experience over at Chord and what might be transferable from there in my time at that organization over here, I’d say there’s lots of things, maybe the most significant of which is just foundationally challenging assumptions on how you do business and looking to improve. And so I think about what we did over my time at Chord, challenging our development assumptions, challenging our assumptions on where inventory was and where it could be, and then certainly leveraging the advantage of the platform that we created for the benefit of our organization and shareholders. And so all of that, I think, is really a bit irrespective of what basin you’re in. Foundationally, both organizations are producing a commodity. Now, there’s different macro associated with that commodity, but in a commodity business I think there’s lots of similarities.
I think I’ll bring those similarities to bear over at Expand Energy and look forward to working with the team to leverage our platform here.
Charles Mead (Analyst at Johnson Rice)
Got it. That is helpful, Danny. Thank you. And then my follow-up, perhaps for Josh. Josh, I think you addressed some of this in response to an earlier question, but regarding the curtailments and TILs in 4Q, are there any things you’re looking at beyond, I’d say, the two big ones, which are weather and pipeline maintenance, that could affect how your curtailments and TILs progress over 4Q? And what do you have contemplated right now in your guide in those two dimensions?
Josh Viets (Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer)
Yeah, maybe kind of answer this in reverse. Included in our guide, and you’ll notice there’s a relatively wide range of production expectations from 7.4 to 7.6 Bcf a day for Q4. And really what that’s implying is that we’re going to retain a significant amount of flexibility in the program. We do have curtailments coming into the fourth quarter in Northeast Appalachia. We are actively having discussions around the timing of new turn-in-lines, and so we’re going to be disciplined with how we introduce volumes.
And, again, the goal is to always align our production with the most constructive price environment. Clearly, weather is an overhang on the markets right now. Production, we typically see a little bit of a pop heading into the winter months. We see that regularly in Appalachia. I think there’s an expectation we could expect to see a seasonal pop in Haynesville with some of the private producers as well. I think that is also an overhang on the market today.
I think the other thing, if you think about the longer term, the market’s going to be watching for where storage ends up, and this is by region across the U.S., and if we end up in elevated levels of storage coming into next spring and summer, that’s really going to create another overhang on the market. But I just need to remind you, what we’re focused on is long-term value creation, and what we see again is roughly 13 Bcf a day of new demand coming by 2028.
So we really see 2027 being one of transition. We’re going to be flexible with our business and put ourselves in a position to respond when the demand shows up.
Charles Mead (Analyst at Johnson Rice)
That is helpful detail. Thank you, Josh.
OPERATOR
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Betty Jeong of Barclays. Your line is open. Betty.
Betty Jeong (Analyst at Barclays)
Hi, good morning. I have a question on the long-term marketing margin expansion. In the slide, you guys talked about the $250 million that’s tied to new demand growth, particularly LNG. So can you just talk about your strategy to capture that opportunity? Is it more about adding LNG offtake and building capacities on the global spread? And how does Twin Eagle fit into that strategy?
Dan Turco (Executive Vice President, Marketing & Commercial)
Good, thanks for the question, Betty. So when we think of the LNG market, we really see that as an international gas market. And so our strategy around LNG is to tie our domestic production to international pricing, which provides diversification and, obviously, when you look at LNG prices at the moment, a significant premium over Henry Hub. So what our strategy is around LNG is to build a reasonable portfolio around LNG liquefaction and offtake, and then a portfolio of customers that take that LNG as we go in.
We have signed the Delfin agreement earlier this year, which is for 1.15 million tonnes of LNG offtake starting in 2031; towards the end, 2032. You should expect us to add more to that LNG portfolio so that it’s ultimately quite a sizable portfolio and provides us with access to those international markets and diversification away from Henry Hub.
Betty Jeong (Analyst at Barclays)
That makes sense. And then maybe just follow up on how you guys think about the production management into next year. To what extent could 2024 be a playbook? Would you consider again the DUCs and deferrals to maintain a higher productive capacity into a stronger long-term demand outlook?
Josh Viets (Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer)
Yeah, Betty, I think the answer to that is just yes. I think we’ve proven an ability to go create value through our productive capacity strategy that’s inclusive of base curtailments, building DUCs, building up an inventory of deferred turn-in-lines. And so we’re going to be very mindful of where the markets are and broader supply-demand fundamentals and look for opportunities to create more value from the production that we produce.
Betty Jeong (Analyst at Barclays)
Got it. Thank you.
OPERATOR
Thank you. Our final question comes from the line of Philip Jungwirth at BMO. Your line is open. Philip,
Philip Jungwirth (Analyst at BMO Capital Markets)
And also wanted to extend my congrats to Danny. When you think through the gas supply or data center opportunity and how Twin Eagle increases your scope across much of North America, is there a good way to think about the ultimate benefit to Expand Energy for any supply deals that are outside areas where your core upstream positions are located, versus if you were to announce a project within the Gulf Coast or Appalachia footprint? And then just separately, we’ve seen fewer projects in Northeast PA, but you do have a large acreage footprint here.
So just wondering if you see much potential in this area.
Dan Turco (Executive Vice President, Marketing & Commercial)
Yeah, no, I think you go right to the heart of the benefit of being integrated with Twin Eagle and our own capability. So that comes then in two forms. One is where we have equity gas. Obviously, there’s a lot there, but in some of those areas, and you mentioned Pennsylvania, data centers go slow, the development of data centers. But data centers are going to be everywhere in the country. And so when you start looking west into Ohio, of course we see more data centers coming in and we can get gas there. But even further west, there are going to be data centers all over the U.S., and having the capability that came with Twin Eagle to connect really coast to coast allows us to kind of go after those projects.
Gas in some of those areas needs to come from far; some of it needs to come from the north, some of it needs to come from the east. But with our capabilities with Twin Eagle, we can connect all of that and be competitive on all the data centers throughout. So it’s very much an integral part of how we think of reaching those customers that are further away from the production basins.
Philip Jungwirth (Analyst at BMO Capital Markets)
Okay, great. And then Permian gas debottlenecking. It’s obviously been a headwind for price, but a lot of this gas does get stuck around Houston. We do have three pipes, though—Black Fin, Trident, Mustang—all starting up here in the next, call it, like 12, 18 months to move gas into the LNG corridor. So just as you look out 12, 18 months, how do you see these higher flows kind of impacting realized price for Expand Energy, if at all, in the Haynesville?
Or do you think there’s enough LNG demand pull between now and then to largely offset incremental supply?
Dan Turco (Executive Vice President, Marketing & Commercial)
Yeah, Philip, I think the view is that this is expected. We expected pipes to get built and get over and around the city of Houston, which is where a large part of the gas has been bottlenecked for the last several years. So this is really no surprise to us. But when we look out longer term and look at the broader supply-demand fundamentals, what we see is that Permian gas, though there is a significant amount, will not be able to meet the upcoming demand.
It will periodically, and that’s what you see in a year like we’re entering into in 2027. But if we look out over the next, you know, call it four to six years or so, we expect that Haynesville is going to need to grow by somewhere around 5 Bcf a day in order to match the demand. And as the marginal molecule, we expect that to be the mechanism at which price gets set. And so that’s why we remain highly constructive on our broader portfolio, the gas markets in general, and the option that we’ve created in a place like the Western Haynesville for ourselves.
Thank you.
OPERATOR
Thank you. I would now like to turn the conference back to Danny Brown for closing remarks. Sir.
Danny Brown (Chief Executive Officer)
Thanks, Latif. And for those that joined our call this morning, thank you for your time and your interest in our organization. To the Expand Energy team, I look forward to working with you to deliver the full potential of Expand Energy for our shareholders. And to our investors, I look forward to listening to and engaging with you along the way. Thanks again.
OPERATOR
This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.
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.
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