Expand Energy sticks to full-year production goal, touts Twin Eagle marketing purchase’s prospects
The leaders of Expand Energy Corp. have lifted their full-year forecasts for production from the company’s Appalachian operations by 1% while slightly decreasing their Haynesville production goals. The company’s goals remain to have 2026 production average 7.5 bcfd and to have output peak in the fourth quarter.
Houston-based Expand turned in line 48 wells during the 3 months that ended June 30, down from 50 early this year. The company has since winter trimmed its rig count to 12 from 13 and will step down a bit more by year’s end to 11-12.
Speaking after they reported Expand’s second-quarter earnings of $522 million on total revenues of $2.96 billion, executives said they expect their assets in the Southwest Appalachia basin to continue to ramp output after they were restrained by severe winter weather early this year. Citing strong performances from wells drilled in the spring, they are now forecasting that full-year production will average 1.66 bcfd, an increase from 1.625 bcfd 3 months ago. From 1.67 bcfd in the second quarter, output is expected to rise to 1.76 bcfd in this year's fourth quarter.
While pushing those organic gains, Expand teams also have been investing in lease acquisitions in the Haynesville basin and in Northeast Appalachia. The company has lately spent about $46 million to acquire about 33,000 acres in Sabine and Natchitoches parishes in Louisiana, adjacent to its Natchitoches Fault Zone holdings. Those moves have the potential to add more than 100 locations and Expand plans to spud its first well there this quarter.
In Northeast Appalachia, Expand bought about 3,000 acres in Pennsylvania’s Bradford County for $15 million during the second quarter and began work on its well there earlier this month.
Asked on a conference call if investments such as those might push Expand’s capital expenditures close to the high end of its 2026 range of $2.75-2.95 billion, chief operating officer Josh Viets said activity is likely to take a step back.
“Q2 was definitely, I think, the highlight for us. I think we have been working very hard to bring forward some interesting opportunities for the company,” Viets told analysts and investors. “We do remain heavily focused on identifying new opportunities. They’re simply hard to predict. We do anticipate across the second half of the year that spending will wind down a little bit.”
Twin Eagle, natural gas marketing
A big talking point on the conference call interim president and chief executive officer Michael Wichterich and his team hosted was the planned $1.25 billion acquisition of natural gas marketing and storage business Twin Eagle. Wichterich, who also said a new chief executive should be named in the next 3 months, said the transaction boosts Expand’s status as an integrated nat gas company by adding Twin Eagle’s 1,000 customers across the country and giving Expand a shot at growing EBITDA by $350 million by end-2028.
“We’re not trying to be a midstream company,” Wichterich said when asked about the Twin Eagle approach versus investing in more hard assets. “We think there are a lot of great ones out there. […] That’s a hard place for us to compete. We prefer to compete on a customer basis and upstream basis. If we have opportunities to unlock our gas to go further and increase our prices, we’re going to do that.”
Shares of Expand (Ticker: EXE) rose solidly on the earnings report and conference call. In early-afternoon trading on July 29, they were up more than 4% to $92.45. Year to date, however, they’re still down about 15%, a decline that has trimmed the company’s market capitalization to about $22 billion.
About the Author
Geert De Lombaerde
Senior Editor
A native of Belgium, Geert De Lombaerde has more than two decades of business journalism experience and writes about markets and economic trends for Endeavor Business Media publications Healthcare Innovation, IndustryWeek, FleetOwner, Oil & Gas Journal and T&D World. With a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri, he began his reporting career at the Business Courier in Cincinnati and later was managing editor and editor of the Nashville Business Journal. Most recently, he oversaw the online and print products of the Nashville Post and reported primarily on Middle Tennessee’s finance sector as well as many of its publicly traded companies.