BKV Corp (BKV) 2025 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Good morning everyone and welcome to BKV's 4th quarter and full year 2025 earnings conference call. (Operator Instructions) I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Michael Hall, Vice President of Investor relations.

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone.

Thank you for joining BKV Corporation's 4th quarter and full year 2025 earnings conference call. With me today are Chris Kalman, Chief Executive Officer, Eric Jacobson, President of Upstream, and David Cameron, Chief Financial Officer.

Before we provide our prepared remarks, I would like to remind all participants that our comments today will include forward-looking statements which are subject to certain risks, uncertainties, and assumptions. Actual results could differ materially from those in any forward-looking statements. In addition, we may refer to non-GAAP measures for a more detailed discussion of the risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from any forward-looking statements.

Including those associated with the recently completed Power JV transaction or the integration of recently acquired upstream assets, as well as the reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures, please see the company's public filings included in the Form 8k filed today.

I would also point listeners to the updated investor presentation posted this morning on our investor relations website. We encourage everyone listening to review those slides and our forthcoming annual report to be filed with the SEC for further information on our business operations, results from the quarter and full year, and details on our 2026 guidance. I'd now like to turn the call over to our CEO Chris Kalman.

Thank you, Michael, and thank you everyone for joining us to discuss our fourth quarter and full year 2025 results.

As we close out 2025, I'm proud to report that BKV delivered a transformational year that exemplifies our said did culture and positions the company sustained long-term profitable growth.

We generated strong earnings, maintained a fortress balance sheet, and delivered strong growth.

2025 marked our first full year as a public company, and we executed across each pillar of our closed loop strategy.

Our business lines of upstream natural gas midstream, carbon capture, and power deliver premium low carbon energy solutions that are increasingly sought after in today's energy markets.

In our upstream business, we exceeded expectations throughout the year, and our performance across the Barnett and Northeast Pennsylvania showcased the depth, durability, and competitiveness of our upstream assets, with approximately 8% exit to exit organic production growth on upstream development capital well within cash flow and with top tier F&D costs.

The successful close of the bedrock acquisition in the 3rd quarter was executed in line with our plans.

The transaction materially expanded our footprint in the Fort Worth Basin and added high-quality assets. We added more than 100 million cubic feet equivalent per day of production and nearly 1 TCFE of proved reserves to our leading position in the basin.

Our upstream business remains foundational to our growth strategy. We believe we have built a scalable, repeatable, and disciplined operating model for extracting value from mid-tenured shale basins.

Our team is at the forefront of driving efficiency by leveraging technology, data, and AI to optimize development and performance across our portfolio.

This is a model that we believe wins in mid-tenured gas basins over the long-term.

In our carbon capture business, we had meaningful progress in 2025.

Earlier in the year, we secured a transformative partnership with Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, or CIP, who committed up to $500 million for joint investment in carbon capture opportunities. We are working hand in hand with their team to scale this business profitably.

Our flagship Barnett Zero facility continues to operate efficiently and has achieved cumulative injection of over 311,000 metric tons since first injection in November 2023.

Further, we have announced multiple new projects during the year, including projects in Texas with a large midstream operator and Comstock Resources.

We recently signed definitive agreements with Comstock Resources to sequester CO2 from their Bethel and Marquet facilities in the Western Hainesville play.

We expect to commence commercial operations in 2028.

I would like to thank Jay and his team for their continued strong partnership in these projects.

BKV has taken a clear leadership position in carbon capture and materially advanced the projects in our pipeline towards commerciality.

On the back of that momentum, we are refreshing our near-term CCUS injection target to 1.5 million tons per annum within 2028.

We believe this volume run rate will enable the business to contribute materially to our financials.

Carbon capture remains a key growth driver in 2026 and beyond.

We remain on track for the startup of our Cotton Cove and Eagle Ford facilities in the first half of 2026 and are excited about the future opportunities in this business.

Our power business is a core growth engine within our closed loop strategy.

On the back of our recent Power JV transaction, which closed on January 30th, we now hold a 75% majority ownership in the 1.5 gigawatts of low heat rate generation capacity at the Temple plants, which are located at the centre of IRCO's accelerating AI and data centre boom.

BKV's power assets performed well during Winter Storm Fern.

Within Urquot, natural gas supplied nearly 60% of power generation through periods of peak load.

This represents nearly 4 times the next closest source and reinforces the central role of natural gas in ensuring grid reliability. We are well positioned to deliver capital efficient growth from these assets as we seek to secure long-term fixed offtake agreements in the form of power purchase agreements or PPAs.

In the second half of 2025, we continue to advance our structured and competitive process to secure a long-term offtake for our temple energy complex. We are currently evaluating proposals from multiple counterparties which have shown strong interest in our offering.

The broad participation in this process has reinforced our conviction that our temple energy complex is uniquely positioned to provide near-term power solutions to some of the largest technology companies and infrastructure developers in the country.

We remain confident in the timelines we previously outlined and continue to target a potential PPA in 2026 to early 2027. BKV's position in the state of Texas is ideally situated to benefit from the confluence of some of the biggest megatrends in energy.

The Barnett Shale in the Fort Worth Basin sits underneath one of the fastest growing markets for power and industrial growth in the country. We believe Texas is set to attract significant investment dollars in data centre and other infrastructure over the coming years.

BKV is working closely with state regulators, policymakers, and stakeholders to ensure investments in power and other forms of energy generate win-win outcomes for the state. Our strategy is backed by a systematic investment approach, which combines the winning formula of gas, power, and carbon capture to generate premium margins from our energy portfolio.

Our carbon sequestered gas product, which we expect to hit the market this year, is a prime example of the unique energy products that BKV's closed loop strategy can bring to the market.

BKV is excited about the future as we believe our differentiated strategy will create leading risk adjusted returns for our shareholders.

With that, I'd like to hand the call over to BKV's President of Upstream, Eric Jacobson, to discuss our Upstream and CCUS operational performance for the quarter and full year.

Thanks Chris. 2025 was an outstanding year for our operations, capped by a strong fourth quarter that highlighted the depth and quality of our asset base, the strength of our team, and the disciplined, efficient approach we apply across the business.

For the full year 2025, our upstream business delivered and, in many cases, exceeded the targets we previously set. Including the following highlights. We delivered robust and organic production growth of 8% exit to exit while spending well within upstream cash flow and driving continued cost efficiencies.

We beat and raised our full year legacy production guidance twice in the year by 4% at mid-year and then by another 1%, all within our initial development Capex and while maintaining LOE at the midpoint of guidance.

We achieved a step change in completions efficiency, setting multiple internal records above 22 horsepower hours per day.

We drilled several company record laterals, including the longest well in the history of the Barnett Shale. We delivered top tier performing new Barnett wells, with three ranking among the highest in the entire history of the basin based on 1st month production. We lowered D&C cost per lateral foot to a gas pier leading $545 per foot.

We achieved consistent and sustained positive offset well or P production, a unique advantage in the Barnett, which we discussed further in our investor presentation.

We delivered lowest base decline amongst our peers supported by our extensive data set and application of AI technology.

We seamlessly integrated our recently acquired bedrock assets, adding scale and inventory to our leading Barnett position. And we ended the year with approximately 6 trillion cubic feet equivalent of 1P reserves valued at NE NPV 10 of $3.1 billion.

The 4th quarter was a continuation of the results we had seen all year. We again outperformed guidance across key metrics punctuated by zero reportable safety incidents, production that outperformed the upper end of our guidance range at 940 million cubic feet equivalent per day. We delivered our first Nipah well to production for the year and drilled 3 additional wells with completions expected in mid to late 1Q of 26.

And we had over $6 million invested in rapidly progressing bedrock development, landing full year 2025 development capital spend at $245 million. To note, we invested $319 million in all corporate CapEx, which was below the initial low end of full year guidance. And we executed our first post-acquisition completions on the bedrock assets, including 2 ducts and 2 refracks with strong results.

One more example of Barnett competitiveness, and an important proof point in the continued optimization of the Barnett development, is what we refer to as positive offset wells or POW.

In addition to new wells outperforming type curve expectations, we are consistently observing a material and sustained uplift in parent well performance across our DSUs following new completions. Based on early analysis across approximately 30 new wells and their offsets, we have seen an approximate 22% uplift above type curve on average through the 1st 150 days of production. Roughly half of this outperformance is due to power.

Whether POW, peer leading D&C costs, structurally lowered operating costs, or applying big data and AI, these and more combine to validate our comprehensive operating approach of delivering durable value over the long-term, and there are more innings yet to go. It is a model that we believe wins in every mid-tenured gas basin.

We are applying that model to our bedrock acquisition, which has proven to be everything we anticipated and more with integration progressing ahead of pace. The assets fit seamlessly with our existing acreage position, creating further opportunities for lateral extensions, inventory additions, and multiple op optimization levers.

As an example of further accreting value, or what we call torque, we are actively evaluating over 60 equivalent 10,000 ft tier one locations compared to 50 underwritten and over 100 refract candidates compared to 80 underwritten. Importantly, value creation from the acquisition is exceeding our underwriting assumptions in development counts, early time performance, day one LOE reductions, and other areas reflecting our ability to apply torque to the asset and unlock incremental synergies and value.

These assets complement our low base decline, attractive economics, and highly competitive and a creative inventory opportunities, which are all trademarks of our dominant Barnett position.

Our performance throughout 2025 confirms that the Barnett is not only alive and well, but highly attractive and ideally positioned relative to other shale plays with advantaged access to the heart of the Gulf Coast gas market.

Looking ahead to 2026, we expect continued strong performance from our upstream operations, enhanced by the full integration of our bedrock assets.

While the impacts of Winter Storm Fern resulted in significant and unanticipated downtime, we still expect strong production in the range of 900 million to 930 million cubic feet equivalent per day during Q1. Development CapEx spend in the first quarter, we anticipate being in a range of $70million to $100 million.

For the full year 2026, we are guiding to 935 million cubic feet equivalent per day of production on 240 million of development capital spend right in line with our 2025 development program. Our upstream business continues to serve as the backbone of our closed loop operations model, generating the cash flow that enables growth across all our business lines while maintaining operational excellence and capital efficiency.

Turning to carbon capture, 2025 was a year of strong and accelerating momentum for the business. Against a backdrop of growing market demand and supportive policy tailwinds, we advanced multiple projects across our portfolio, progressing them through critical stages of evaluation, development, and execution.

Key highlights from the continued expansion and maturation of our development pipeline include our Eagle ford and Cotton Cove projects continue to progress as planned with commencement of operations at both locations on track. At our East Texas project, where we are working with the same large midstream company as we are in the Eagle ford, we have reached internal FID and are currently scheduled to begin drilling the injection well in the first half of this year.

And we also plan to drill our high west stratigraphic test well in the first half of the year. In addition, as Chris mentioned, we have recently executed definitive agreements with Comstock to add CCUS to their Bethel and Marque facilities in the Western Hainesville play in East Texas.

We continue to advance discussions on additional CCS opportunities with new partners and emitters with a focus on larger projects that offer greater economies of scale. Several of these opportunities are referenced in our updated investor presentation, and we look forward to providing updates as appropriate.

Our flagship Barnet Zero facility continues to maintain exceptional reliability, providing the operating model that we will apply to our soon to be commissioned projects.

Given our continued execution and expanding project base, our path to achieving 1.5 million tons per year run rate, CO2 injection during 2028, is well within reach.

In addition to the projects currently underway, we have commissioned several studies to evaluate the feasibility and cost profile of deploying post-combustion carbon capture technologies. Demand signals continue to strengthen across power and industrial markets as customers seek reliable, low carbon energy solutions, and we are positioning the business to remain a leader in this space.

I'll now turn the call over to our CFO David Tameron for a review of our power business and financial results.

Thank you, Eric. 2025 was a year of meaningful progress for BKB as we continue to execute and deliver on our promises.

We had significant transactions in Upstream Power and CCUS. We strengthened our balance sheet and improved our capital structure, issuing our first ever bond while also increasing float and improving liquidity in our stock.

We enter 2026 with significant momentum and are well positioned to capitalize on our strategic initiative. In our power business, we deliver consistent performance throughout 2025 with the Temple Energy Complex maintaining high availability factors, minimal unplanned downtime, and strong operational execution.

The Temple plants achieved a combined average capacity factor of 57% during the fourth quarter of 2025 and 59% for full year 2025, generating over 7,600 gigawatt hours.

During the fourth quarter, power prices averaged $49.69 per megawatt hour, with natural gas costs averaging $3.55 per MMBtu. This resulted in an average quarterly spark spread of $24.54 per megawatt hour.

For the full year, power prices averaged $48.86 per megawatt hour, with natural gas costs averaging $3.31 per MMBtu. This resulted in an average full year spark spread of $25.36.

Underscoring the growing power demand in Urkat.

Average spark spreads for the full year were up over 15% versus the prior year.

Power JV adjusted EBITDA was $31 million for the fourth quarter, and $127 million for the full year, of which BKV had a 50% interest. Reflecting our new controlling ownership stake, beginning with our first quarter 2026 results, we will consolidate the Power JV.

For the first quarter, we expect gross power JV EBITD of $25million to $35 million reflecting typical seasonal patterns, capture of storm-related power pricing, and strong operational performance thus far in the quarter.

Importantly, we weathered Winter Storm Fern without any related downtime.

This is an important proof point for the reliability of our temple assets as we engage in PPA off-taker discussions. For full year 2026, we are guiding to a Power JV EBITDA range of $135million to $175 million.

This outlook reflects the strength of the platform we've built, continued operational execution, and confidence in the earning power of our temple assets.

Turning to our 2025 corporate financial performance, these results clearly demonstrate our team's relentless focus on execution and ability to consistently deliver. Combined adjusted IBA attribute to BKB was $109 million in the fourth quarter and $390 million for the full year.

This represented a 19% increase quarter over quarter and a 47% increase year on year.

For the 4th quarter, adjusted income was $27 million or $0.29 per diluted share. For full year 25, adjusted an income total of $122 million or $1.40 per diluted share. Capital expenditures totalled $102 million for the fourth quarter and $319 million for the full year. This full year result is below the loan of our original guidance, reflecting highly competitive capital efficiency and our ongoing attention to capital discipline and cost optimization.

Importantly, after fully funding all capital investments across our business lines and excluding any cash contribution from our Power JV, we generated positive free cash flow for the entire year.

And we did this while further strengthening our balance sheet and improving our liquidity at year end.

Total debt was $500 million with the only debt outstanding reflected in our recently issued senior notes. Net leverage ratio was 0.9 times. Cash and cash equivalents total $199 million and total liquidity stood at $984 million more than double the prior year.

Looking ahead, our 2026 capital investment program is structured to lay the foundation for a multi-year phase of disciplined growth.

There are 3 key components of this program. First, Total gross capital expenditures of $410 to $560 million including an anticipated $135 million of gross strategic power capital.

This power investment reflects the constructive conversations we are having with multiple potential PPA offtakers.

Second, on a net basis and excluding our power growth capital, we are targeting a net capital investment midpoint of $324 million effectively flat year on year.

Third, and importantly, based on current strip pricing, and just as we did in 2025, we expect our total full-year net capital expenditures to be fully funded within cash flow.

This approach reinforces our commitment to discipline, capital allocation while positioning the company for sustainable long-term value creation.

Regarding hedging, our program continues to provide downside protection while allowing participation in favorable market conditions.

In our upstream business, our total 2026 hedge position protects just over 60% of forecasted production with gas hedged at $3.85 per MMBTU and NGOs hedged at $22 per barrel.

In our power business for 2026, we have hedged 40% of our ERCOT generation capacity through heat rate call options or HRCOs. These HERCOs include substantial premium revenues that help mitigate annual earnings volatility.

We've also locked in fixed spark spreads on roughly 100 megawatts while retaining meaningful merchant exposure across the balance of the platform. For the remainder of our 2026 guidance, please refer to our complete schedule, which can be found both in the press release and our latest investor deck.

With that, I'll turn the call back to Chris for his closing remarks.

Thanks, David.

As we conclude our discussion of 2025 and look ahead to 2026, I want to highlight what truly differentiates BKV.

We have built a distinctive winning strategy connecting natural gas production.

Power generation and carbon capture into a virtual closed loop platform uniquely positioned to serve the evolving needs of the energy market.

This strategy is operating today, delivering results and positions us to shape solutions for the evolving needs of hyperskiers, data centre developers, and industrial customers.

Looking ahead to 2026, we see clear growth vectors.

Increased control of our power JV is expected to enhance earnings and cash flow, while enabling tangible strides towards executing a PPA. Our CCUS business is accelerating momentum with additional projects coming online soon and with an increasingly high graded portfolio of attractive projects in development.

Our upstream business remains a reliable, repeatable cash engine with leading corporate decline rates and F&D metrics.

Finally, I want to thank our exceptional BKV team for their commitment to our values, our safety culture, and their focus on the execution of our strategy. We enter 2026 with strong momentum.

Clear line of sight to growth and confidence in our ability to create long-term risk adjusted shareholder value.

Betty Jing, Barclays

Hi, good morning, team, congrats on just strong execution across all segments in your 1st year.

I want to start up, with a question on the strategic power growth CapEx.

Can you just, of course, can you speak to what specifically is that spending on. Clearly it's not maintenance, and it's aligned with the progress in the conversation that you are seeing. So can you just give us a bit more colour on is it spending ahead of, contract that you're expected to sign later this year, early next year? Thanks.

Yeah, hey, Betty, thanks for the question. So, you're correct, the power investments are strategic, as you can imagine right now, as you discuss a long-term offtake agreements with potential customers, those designs are going to be in a private use network type set up that's the, assumption here and so as part of a private use network you need to invest in, transformers, switches, power lines. Generation equipment, earthworks, pipelines, water, and that infrastructure then gets recovered, over the life of a contract, right? And so what we're guiding here is that we've got, line of sight to, designs and or investments that need to be made to enable this, and that's really where you see that capital when you think about the existing Temple 1, Temple 2, CapEx, you could imagine historically that's been in that sort of $5 million-ish per year level and we expect that to continue so the vast majority of what we're guiding here to is really for establishment of a private use network type set up and that's again we think incredibly important to accreting value in a very capital efficient manner for BKB.

Yeah, Betty, just if I could tack on one thing, just keep in mind that all this is going to be funded within cash flow our entire 26 program including this power. Strategic, power capital is going to be within cash flow for 2026.

Got it. And it also sounds like you will, recover this cutback in that PPA contract down the line as well. So. Exactly, it works just like a lease, Betty if you invest in, landlord puts in infrastructure, then they recovered in the rent. It's the same concept, right? In a PPA you basically amortize the cost of your capital, over the life of a contract as part of the investments you make.

Got it. That makes sense. My follow-up is on the CCS, business. It's really good to see that million, tons per annum target getting raised to 1.5. Clearly momentum on that asset. Can you speak to the financial implication of that business going forward? Maybe help us with, maybe dollar per ton margin on that business and what's, what are you seeing in the market to drive that confidence to raise that long-term target?

Hi, good morning, Betty. This is Eric. Yeah, thanks for the question on CCUS. It's a good one, and we've signalled before on the back of the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, some expanded commercial interest. We continue to see that and that commercial interest and the subsequent projects like Comstock that we were excited to announce definitive agreements reached upon.

In total has given us the confidence to raise that target to 1.5 million tons run rate within 2028. So we're still stepping into that already this year with two more projects coming on in the first half. We'll be drilling another injection well, a high west stratigraphic well, and then advancing these commercial agreements like Comstock towards FID. You can think about the economics of these projects and the kind of $48 per ton EBITDA range, and those are the kind of solid economics we use as we march forward towards that 1.5 million tons.

That's great.

Our next question comes from Scott Garber with Citigroup. Please proceed with your question.

Yes, good morning, and I'll let go the, congrats on a strong performance, last year given multiple vectors of growth here. Chris, I wanted to come back to power. You're investing in a private use network. Sounds like that's separate from the grid, so just wanted to confirm that. And then, there's discussions happening at ERcot. Around alterations, to their grid connect approval process, how is that impacting your discussions, with potential customers, for a longer-term PPA?

Yeah, hey Scott, thanks. Good questions, on the private use network, the setup would be, ultimately to connect it back into the grid so you can imagine it's a behind the meter setup. You would, hypothetically connect into a data centre directly from your generation assets, but then you would have a switching yard, that would feed a substation which is grid connected and so, think of it in simple terms, the analogy would be sort of like a private use network that connects then into a broader grid. And those timelines may not match up 1 to 1, but that's the end goal, and so as we've mentioned that this is probably where you're going to see the market move, with co-located power generation over the next few years, and the reason for that is manyfold, but a lot of it has to do with transmission congestion.

One of the biggest constraints in the market, this will get to your second question, is the ability to kind of move electrons in sizable form, in and out localized areas and having co-located power in a privacy use network set up really does solve a lot of the issues associated with that. It optimizes the amount of CapEx that needs to be incorporated in the grid and so. That's really where we see the market going in terms of the regulation specific for Texas and ERCO.

I think it's overall bullish. Look, Texas is going big on infrastructure, particularly data centre infrastructure. It's open for business. There's a very strong feeling here in the state to promote investments in the power grid, and so we think, Texas is one of the states that's really going to figure this out quickly. And BV is taking a leadership position in power in Texas with regards to the regulations themselves. The major concerns of the grid operators are 1, we want to ensure grid reliability. So how are you considering that? 2, we want to make sure rates are fair and equitable to existing, customers across the state. And 3, we need to make sure that new investments are built into the system or are encouraged.

And so the regulations are really orienting towards a large load that's the SB 6 regulation that everyone's talking about here and we think it's incredibly constructive because what they're doing is creating a frame framework to high grade projects that address all those three things, right? Grid reliability, ability to, ensure equitable rates to existing customers in the state, and then adding grid, generation assets and our designs that we've been describing, including the. CapEx I mentioned address those three key points. So, we think this is going to high grade the projects that are real, that have real customers that have real, funding behind them, and weed out those projects which are speculative and sort of not as real. So, overall I think that we're active with the regulators and the stakeholders here in the state, and we think that Texas figures this out very quickly and I think a lot of customers, have that same view.

I appreciate all the colour, and I also wanted to turn to the common stock, deal, get to see that across the finish line.

Can you just walk through the injection ramp at those facilities, as well as the timing of the associated cap backs, is there cap backs associated with those projects in the second half of this year, for instance? Just some colour that would be great.

Yeah, so. Thanks, Scott, it's a good question. Just appreciate, Jay and his team really working with us on this project. I think if you think about, what we've guided to, we're expecting to be injecting in 28, so that's when we're going to commercialize these projects.

And we didn't guide to a volume ramp. Obviously, that's, something that, we're working with, Comstock, and we'll kind of figure out. I think you can think about the volume as multiples of our current injection amounts, so it's a significant amount of injection volume.

If you think about the spend curve, most of these projects follow, a typical construction S curve. So within the last 12 months before injection, that's when you see a majority of the CapEx get spent. We've kind of historically guided, to sort of, a couple 100 bucks, a ton of capital that has to go into investment, and so that's probably not a good, sorry, that's probably not a bad, way to think about it, but yeah, I think, you should expect that spend to be more sort of back and loaded, and then the volumes themselves to be multiples of what, we're currently injecting.

Great, exciting. I appreciate the colour. Thank you.

Jonathan Mardini, Key Bank Capital Markets.

Hi, good morning.

Thank you for taking our questions.

On power on slide 7 you reference a potential PPA execution on 4.5 terawatt hours of unutilized capacity. Can you just clarify whether this implies that, a PPA covering just a portion of the temple plant's capacity with the remainder, being sold into merchant markets or just how you're seeing the structure of a PPA shaping up based on your latest discussions.

Yeah Jonathan it's Chris here I it's a good question so when you look at Temple today we've got two identical power plants in Temple today, each 750 megawatts. Today we hedge roughly half, of the complex, so one power plant equivalent worth of power, and there's several reasons you do that, right? Oftentimes you can sequence your maintenance to be down on one plant and be fulfilling your power obligations of the other, and so we see a PPA in a similar type of structure.

A PPA effectively is a long-term hedge on, power prices, and so you could imagine that you're going to, always be kind of looking at about half your capacity being. Kind of contracted and the other half being floated so that you can manage as I said around your maintenance schedules and just have resiliency as well and so you the balance when you have the balance of the volumes that are not contracted you're absolutely right you would from a behind the meter set up by actually able to feed that into the grid and sell that and you're able to load balance, right? So if you've got, additional power that that the costs not using you would again theoretically sell that additional power into the grid as well. So when you think about these agreements, they're structured like long-term offtake agreements that you would see potentially even for an LNG contract.

So they're substantive. You can imagine something like 750 megawatts over 10 to 20 years, with a sort of a structured price which is, somewhat capacity payment blended with an energy payment. And you know at a price that's typically above strip, right? So these are the structures that we see in the market today, and I think are good reference points and you're seeing starting to see the announcements on the gas side for these, but yeah, that's how you can, envision something like this coming together.

Okay, that's great context. I appreciate that.

Just moving on to CCS.

The on the sequestration outlook for a 1.5 million ton annual run rate by 2028, it's an increase from the prior 1 million tons you saw by 2027, just on that gradual ramp, can you just help us understand how you see those volumes scaling throughout 2030.

Sure, hey.

Good morning, John. Eric here. So yeah, the, ramp, through 2030. So I'll start with the, ramp into 2028, 1.5 million tons, as you referenced, we've, updated and, upgraded that on the back of a lot of commercial interest, as I mentioned earlier following the one big beautiful bill. We've taken that commercial interest and translated it into projects like the Comstock project, like others in the making that we're progressing towards FID. As I mentioned, we have the two this year. We're drilling some more wells. We're really excited about this kind of steady cadence of CapEx to get us that 1.5 million tons by 2028.

And then as we ramp from there into 2030, the volume start to ramp significantly on the back of some of this commercial interest in bigger projects that we're navigating now on the back of the seven Class 6 permits that we filed, 6 of which are in Louisiana, all of which are progressing nicely.

You'll remember in Louisiana our High West project is surrounded by 30 million tons of CO2 emissions within a 30 mile radius, so you can see the size and the magnitude of projects that help us start to scale this business dramatically past 2028 on the back of these existing Class 6 permits, roughly 50,000 acres we have under poor space lease, and a really nice platform to grow post 2028 as we deliver on the 1.5 million tons run rate within that year.

Understood, appreciate the context. I'll leave it there.

Michael Furrow, Pickering Energy Partners

Hello and good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. It seems like the company's willingness to develop a Temple 3 plant if it's underpinned by an off-take agreement is a positive indicator for your outlook on the PPA market as a whole. So, would you say that your confidence level has improved in signing a quality PPA, and therefore the potential for a Temple ||| plant has improved?

Yeah, hey Michael, good question. Absolutely right. If you look at what I've just described in terms of the way the regulators are thinking about the large load applications and the overall SB 6 process, having additional generation assets co-located with additional. Data centre infrastructure is in our minds very critical and so, you need to be able to show that you're going to not only kind of, take power from the grid, but you're also going to contribute power to the grid and add to grid resiliency so that enters the concept of Temple 3.

We believe that Temple ||| does contribute to that. It adds additional resiliency to the Temple energy complex when you've got, you could imagine Temple 12, and originally Temple was designed for 3 power plants. There's a sufficient amount of space, water, gas, infrastructure, etc.

And so it makes a lot of sense that as you start to design a private use network, you would include the construction and development of additional generation assets in the form of a, hypothetically Temple 3, right? So

We're excited about that again. It would be backed by commercial arrangements in the same vein of the capital we're spending on the power side. You're looking for a return on that capital as part of an agreement, and so we would not move forward without those agreements in place. But as you've highlighted, the optimism around what's happening in Texas and the overall amount of data centre infrastructure that we expect to be built is, I would say, really accelerating, and BKB's at the forefront of that.

I appreciate that detail. As a follow-up, I'd like to hear on the Upper Barnett appraisal program that's targeted for this year. Now the break evening costs appear higher than the core lower Barnett position. So what are the company's ultimate goals here with this program, and maybe you could provide us with maybe a well count that the company plans to test this year.

Yeah, sure.

Hi Michael, this is Eric. Thanks for the good question on the upper Barnett. Yeah, we're excited about the future of the Upper Barnett as included in our inventory counts. We'll be testing one well at least this year, possibly two. Yeah, at the moment our breakeven are slightly higher than our average for the lower Barnett, but on the back of the success we've had in Lower Barnett, dramatically lowering dollar per foot costs by 30% over the last 3 years, enhancing and advancing completions, negotiated gathering, compression, processing. Transport for the upper Barnett, and our ability to prove it, proven to execute, in the high $0.40per MCFE F&D cost, we'll translate all those learnings in the upper Barnett this year. We'll drill the one well. We'll evaluate it.

We may drill a second by the end of the year and then we'll have a steady dose of Upper Barnett. Wells, as part of our program going forward, but we absolutely expect to delineate and confirm those 100 wells this year. We're excited about those on the back of the older vertical wells, some reracks we've had in the area. So, we really think the Upper Barnett is prospective, and we'll look forward to sharing kind of some more results by mid-year, second half of the year.

Thanks for your time.

Jacob Roberts with TPH and Company

Good morning.

Morning Jake. I wanted to start, circling back to the power capital, and I guess my question is maybe in context of slide 25, it, when we think about that guidance, is that a function of the number of potential PPAs? Is it a function of the scale of the agreement or even maybe the geographical distance from Temple?

Yeah, so, thanks Jake. Good question. I think the slide is meant to show the activity around Temple, right? If you think about where people are building massive amounts of data centre infrastructure, they're looking for a few things. One is the ability to add generation assets and grid interconnect. That's critical. Number 2, they're looking for proximity to existing fibre lines and or data centre clusters that are already in existence, and then. 3, they're looking for a buildable, friendly environment were, just in terms of licensing, contracting, regulations, etc. Are streamlined.

Temple sits right between, Dallas-Fort Worth area and the San Antonio Austin cluster, and this slide is meant to show the amount of activity in Temple, the city of Temple itself has been astronomical in the last. Especially 24 months around that, and it's for the reasons that I just mentioned, right? It's proximity, it's flat land, it's buildable, it's Texas. It's grid connected. There's, 30 to 45kV line. So that's the intention in terms of how you'd actually design. The closer to the generation assets, the better, right? As you build, you're going to see more and more of this co-located power design that I'm just describing here. That's critical because of what I mentioned around grid congestion. You, if you're pulling huge amounts of megawatts, the more localized. You can match that demand and supply, the less taxing amount of infrastructure you rely on the grid, and so that's where you're seeing, loads in this in the past were sort of in that 200 300-megawatt kind of level for data centres. Now folks are talking about gigawatt plus. And so when you're talking about a gigawatt interconnection, you really do need a localized generation.

So you can imagine the closer you are to generation assets, you optimize your CapEx more and you get better bang for buck in terms of just the overall design. So, that, that's kind of where this goes and you're seeing that in this slide here on 25, but like I said, Temple is an incredibly active area for data centre development and we're excited to be at the heart of that with 1.5 gigawatts of generation capacity.

Thanks, Chris, that's helpful. And it may be taking a longer-term view, on the gas marketing side of things. Could you remind us on how your Barnett takeaway contracts are currently structured, and maybe in terms of the ability to eventually shift more of those volumes toward what could become more valuable hubs, specifically Katy and Ship Channel.

Yeah, sure. Jake, this is Eric. Thanks for the question on the contractual nature of our marketing. As we show in our slide deck right now, from the Barnett anyway, roughly 40% of our gas goes to NGPL Texo. 30% to Houston Katty Ship and 30% to Transco we receive a very nice uplift from the Transco Station 85 on a typical run rate basis. I think over time a lot of contracts, firm contracts are expiring over the next two or three years, enabling us opportunities to sell the gas into multiple markets and this is exactly why we're so very excited to be positioned in the Gulf Coast. We can sell to our own power plants or other power plants. We can sell locally to the DFW area. We can expand some of our contracts to these existing hubs directly to industrials in the golf course corridor.

And then of course the big boom of all the LNG expansion that's going, that's hitting to the tune of, in our estimation, 17 BCF over the next 4 or 5 years. So being positioned in the Gulf Coast, having multiple access to multiple points and hubs. As well as infrastructure that was built to handle far more than the Barnett is producing today as a basin and the contractual nature of our expire that allow us the flexibility, we're very excited for margin enhancement, what we call alpha margin, as a result of our marketing coming out of the Barnett and really increasing, the commercial generation of cash flow and margin from our company.

Yeah Jake, it's David, it's something we're actively we're actively managing. We spend a lot of time on that internally, and you've heard Chris talk about, right, end of the day we want to be the highest dollar per molecule provider out there, and this is part of that. So, you'll see us over the next, 6 to 9 months roll some more colour around our marketing efforts, and I think we'll be well received by yourself in the street.

Thanks Eric thanks. I appreciate your time.

Fu Fan with Roth Capital Partners. Please proceed with your question.

Yeah, thanks for having me on. So.

I just have a question about the East success project. In the last quarter you said that the target FID was going to be in first half 26, but this quarter you said it's going to be in, you reach the internal FID in December. So is that project, still waiting for FID or is it ready?

That's what my project.

Yeah, thank you. This is Eric.

Thank you for the question about our East East Texas project where we reached internal FID. Yeah, we're very excited about that. That's kind of stage one in our trajectory towards our final investment decision, which we haven't put out a timeline on just yet, but what I can say is, we're progressing that project with the same, major midstream operator for which we're, doing the Eagleford project about to start. All of the documents and agreements are in place.

We'll be drilling the injection well this year with an anticipated startup, sometime in 2027 is what we've signalled. So, the FID is forthcoming on that. We'll be drilling the well. We're very excited for that here in the first half of the year, and we look at that as a continuation. Of our kind of sweet spot so far in these class 2 natural gas processing projects, generating that $48 per ton in EBITDA margin and stair stepping into additional projects in our ramped to 1.5 million tons.

Thank you.

And just my second question about the M&A's, after background acquisitions, so what are the current stands on the M&A right now?

Yeah, it's Chris here. I think we've shown this is a company that knows how to do M&A. The Bad Rock acquisition is going incredibly well in terms of just being able to integrate those assets and really absorb them into the Barnett. The Barnett remains our core M&A target. There's a natural roll up on the upstream side.

There are a number of players that we've shown in the past. There's over a BCF of M&A opportunities in the basin, and we'll continue to prioritize those. More broadly speaking, we're always looking in the M&A markets, right? We think this business model, for mid-tenure gas basins is ideally positioned, and we really are mastering it, we manage some of the oldest shale wells, shale wells in the entire country, and we understand how to manage them really well, and we've demonstrated that, so. As we look in the Gulf Coast at basins and evaluate sort of the horizon, we'll be, active evaluating and analyzing opportunities and looking for creative risk adjusted transactions that the BKB can continue to scale our business model in line with the winning formula of gas, power, and carbon.

Capture.

Thank you.

That's great. We have reached the end of our question-and-answer session. I would now like to turn the floor back over to Chris Cowan for closing comments.

Thank you and thank you everyone. I appreciate your time. BKV is positioned for growth along all our three vectors. We're very excited about 2026 and we look forward to future announcements around that.

Thank you everyone.

Thank you Maria.