Thank you, and good morning, everybody. Welcome to CNX's third quarter Q&A conference call.

Today, we will be answering questions related to our third quarter results. This morning, we posted to our Investor Relations website an updated slide presentation and detailed third quarter earnings release data, such as quarterly E&P data, financial statements, and non-GAAP reconciliations, which can be found in a document titled 3Q 2026 Earnings Results and Supplemental Information of CNX Resources.

Also, we posted to our Investor Relations website our prepared remarks for the quarter, which we hope everyone had a chance to read before the call, as the call today will be used exclusively for Q&A. With me today for Q&A are Alan Shepard, our President and Chief Executive Officer; Ravi Srivastava, our Chief Financial Officer; and Navneet Behl, our Chief Operating Officer.

Please note that the company's remarks made during this call, including answers to questions, include forward-looking statements, which are subject to various risks and uncertainties. These statements are not guarantees of future performance, and our actual results may differ materially as a result of many factors.

A discussion of risks and uncertainties related to those factors and CNX's business is contained in its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and in the release issued today. With that, thank you for joining us this morning.

Operator, can you please open the call up for Q&A at this time?

Thanks, operator. Morning, guys.

Thanks for taking my questions. Was hoping we could maybe just start with the macro backdrop, and you noted in the prepared remarks you'll certainly remain flexible and responsive to the current environment.

Curious maybe how that would kind of translate into your thoughts on '27, just given where gas prices are.

Hey Gabe, thanks for the question. Where we sit right now, we're pretty much on the five-year average for storage levels.

We'll be close to 4 T's going into winter. Right now, we're not giving forward guidance, but right now it looks like we'll be in maintenance production mode, right?

Unless we see something that sort of incentivizes producers to bring on more gas, we'll be staying steady state. Obviously if it sort of degrades from here, we'll make adjustments as necessary.

Thanks, Alan. Maintenance for now, not below maintenance given prices on the screen currently.

You feel good with still maintenance?

We're pretty hedged going into '27. We're a little bit different shape than most folks.

Right now that we'd still be in the maintenance mode mindset.

Right. Great.

That's helpful. Then my follow-up would be another I guess higher-level question.

Big merger in-basin this week was announced, as I'm sure you are all aware. Would love to hear your thoughts maybe on the transaction and just M&A in Appalachia more generally.

We're not going to comment on other folks' M&A. Obviously, it's a commodity industry and you see consolidation in those sorts of industries.

We'll see what the sort of the combined company does in terms of production levels and things like that, but not much color to provide from our side on it.

Okay. Just CNX's appetite for M&A at this stage?

It's one of the lanes of capital allocation, right, as we always talk about. We're open to things that are accretive to the long-term free cash flow per share value.

It's just one of the things we review. Right now share repurchases are sort of the bar we test all of that against, and they continue to be extremely attractive, as you saw this quarter.

Yep, for sure. Okay.

Thanks, Alan. Thanks, everyone.

Hey, Leo.

Hey, Alan. Hi.

Wanted to see if you could comment on inflation. Are you starting to see that creep in in areas of the business, and you expect that to maybe get a little worse next year?

I'll turn that over to Nav.

Hi, Leo. On the inflation side, the cost increase we are seeing are on two things: one is diesel, and another is steel.

Our overall impact to our program is less than 1% of our capital. Not much impact moving forward for us.

Leo, if you think about it, we've driven most of the diesel out of our system through sort of our emission reduction initiatives over the years. We run electric frac fleets.

We have intensive sort of in-water transportation, right? We don't run a lot of water trucks and things like that.

As Nav mentioned, our exposure to those two categories are pretty limited moving into '27. There is certainly increases there, as everyone's seen.

Appreciate that. Then just a question on sort of the Utica here.

I know you haven't had some recent wells, but as you look out a handful of years, certainly my understanding that you guys are going to continue to kind of do more in the Utica. As you think about that, are you contemplating any kind of new midstream buildout you think might be necessary to kind of get some of that deeper Utica in Central Pennsylvania online several years down the road?

As we sort of move through that CPA field, right, we're going to develop that as efficiently as possible, right? We've had a lot of time to sort of plan out the runway there.

You're not going to see any major spikes in sort of infrastructure build. Year to year, you'll see some oscillation, but really call it in the $25 million plus or minus range on infrastructure.

Okay. Thanks, guys.

Yep.

Thanks.

Good morning.

Previously, you talked about 40 to 50,000 Southwest PA Marcellus acres remaining to be developed. I guess just wondering how you expect the transition activity in coming years.

Is the focus going to be predominantly in this area through the decade, or are we going to see a more gradual pivot which would actually extend years of inventory in the core?

Obviously, developing what's remaining in the Southwest PA area on the Marcellus front's the most sort of economic thing to do, right? The infrastructure is all there and they're mostly return trips and things like that.

As we talked about before, the way to think about it is we sort of exit the Southwest PA Marcellus as we kind of exit the decade, right? There's another four to five years sort of to develop the rest of that.

Then the program shifts over to CPA Utica predominantly, with CPA Marcellus, as we call that area. Then, ultimately, you would return back to Southwest PA for Southwest PA Utica and other horizons later on down the road.

Great. Then can you remind us on maintenance capex for CNX and maybe a little bit more theoretical because there's still the potential to drive down costs, but if you did shift to predominantly deep Utica position in Central PA, how do you expect total spend to trend relative to this year's more Southwest PA-focused program?

The way we think about it sort of the capital efficiency metric, all in with the capital infrastructure and the D&C, you're calling that 85 to 90 cent range is where we want to be sort of moving forward. Obviously, that's subject to things like inflation and amount of infrastructure in any given year.

The avenue where there's still opportunity to sort of squeeze costs out of the system is really on the drilling days on the Utica side, right? That's really where our focus is.

Every time we go back to a new pad there, that's where we're being intentful.

Great. Thanks.

Hi, good morning. Hey,

good morning.

Morning, Alan. You had some management change during the quarter.

Just wanted to see if you could add any color on Everett's departure and Ravi assuming the role of CFO.

Excited to have Ravi, and great to have an in-house candidate with his sort of background and skillset to sort of step in the role. Not going to add anything additional on sort of the Everett departure outside what was in the 8-Ks.

Fair enough. I guess thinking long term, been some pretty robust natural gas demand forecasts out there.

I guess want to see your thoughts on do you agree with those and if they play out, how would CNX respond? Would you do anything different than the way the company's been operating the last really six years with aggressively buying back shares?

I would say we're extremely bullish on sort of long-term demand in-basin. In terms of giving you a precise number, whether that's 2 B's or 20 B's, time will tell, right?

There's still a lot of uncertainty on the ultimate end users in terms of AI and things like that. What's clear is natural gas, every drop of it here in Appalachia is going to get developed.

From a pricing perspective, what that means is we're still going to be constrained by the supply curve. This is the way we sort of think about it.

When we see the longer-term strip increasing in pricing to sort of bring a call on what we have, that's when we'll bring incremental volumes to market. Until then, sort of maintenance of production is the way we think about it.

Sounds good. Thank you.

Yep.

Good morning.

Hi, Betty.

Hey, good morning.

My

first on the gas differentials, 3Q differential was a bit wider than where we were expecting. Just wondering if there's anything in particular that impacted that diff.

Could you remind us, what's your in-basin exposure?

Our in-basin exposure's two-thirds. Two-thirds of the whole portfolio, right?

Been challenging up here in-basin with sort of the weather and the softness. Any given day our team's out there optimizing.

We have different sales points, but a lot of the volumes ended up just staying here because it wasn't economic to sort of send to MichCon or other places.

Got it. Then just you guys don't subscribe to the curtailment strategy, right?

Was there any curtailment impact?

No, great question, Betty. There's been some periods over the last couple months where gas has dropped sub-$1.

Because we hedge, there's not a lot we need to do in terms of shut-ins, but there's been some couple of stretches where we have curtailed volumes. It's been less than a B, though, probably for the whole quarter, we haven't sort of spiked that out.

We definitely are sensitive as other folks. When you get down to 50, 60 cent gas in-basin, there's no reason for anybody to sort of produce at that level if you're unhedged.

Right. No, that makes sense.

Then another question on capital allocation. It's the second quarter in the row now that you leaned on the balance sheet a bit for a pretty outsized buyback.

Is that something that you will continue to do and is there a limit on how much you are willing to maybe draw on the balance sheet, on the revolver?

We generally don't try to give too much color on the short-term tactics of the buyback program because that's not sort of in our interest. I think if you look back at the history of what we've done, we've sort of stepped on the gas when we see the sort of sector trade off, and we've laid off when the sector gets a little more bid to it.

Longer term, we still view every share we repurchase as a sort of great opportunity to create long-term per-share value. Particularly when we think about the question about long-term gas demand, right?

Instead of growing production, you can grow production per share by repurchasing shares, right? That's another way to do it, so.

Right. Makes sense.

Thank you.

Hey, just wanted to ask about a lot of companies talking about having conversations and some agreements on direct sales to customers. Are you having any of those kind of conversations with potential customers?

If so, what sort of timeframe should we be thinking about? Are these toward the end of the decade or could they be sooner than that?

We're certainly in the mix with everybody else here in the basin on some of these discussions. The challenge has been what's the incentive to lock yourself up to long-term contracts if you're not getting sort of enough of a premium to lock into that fixed delivery?

That's been the challenge. No particular timeline.

As folks come to market and look for gas for these projects that are coming online over the next five years, we'll participate and we'll update if there's something meaningful to update on it.

Got you. Then you mentioned a little bit about deep Utica.

Should we be thinking for '27 similar kind of program as as this year, turning in line seven or so wells, or could you flex that up at all, or do you have plans to do that?

I think the mix sort of looks like this year. I don't want to give you the precise numbers because I don't have them off the top of my head, but the mix is we're blending in deep Utica with the remaining sort of Southwest PA that we've talked about.

Any given year, I wouldn't get too too engaged in sort of any false precision on the signal there. Like I said, we're super bullish on that horizon and it's sort of going to be core over the next couple decades.

Great. Thanks, Alan.

Yep.

Great. Thank you again for joining us this morning.

Please feel free to reach out if anyone has any additional questions. Otherwise, we'll look forward to speaking with everyone again next quarter.

Thank you.