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New Fortress Energy Inc. (NFE)

Q3 2022 Earnings Call· Tue, Nov 8, 2022

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, please standby. Good day. And welcome to the New Fortress Energy Third Quarter 2022 Earnings Call. Today’s conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Patrick Hughes, Managing Director, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Patrick Hughes

Management

Thank you, Jake, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to New Fortress Energy’s third quarter 2022 earnings conference call. As Jake said, this call is being recorded and will be available by replay on the Investors section of our website under the subheading Events & Presentations. At the same location you will also find our Q3 2022 Investor Presentation, to which we will refer during today’s call. The presentation contains a series of important disclosures related to forward-looking statements and non-GAAP financial measures. We encourage participants to review these important disclosures in addition to the description of risk factors contained within our SEC filings. Now let’s turn to today’s call. This is Patrick Hughes. I look after Investor Relations here at New Fortress Energy. Joining me today are Wes Edens, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Chris Guinta, our Chief Financial Officer; Andrew Dete, Managing Director responsible for Commercial activities, as well as several other members of our team. With that, I will turn the call over to Wes.

Wes Edens

Management

Great. Thanks, Patrick, and thanks everyone for calling in this morning. So as usual, I am going to refer to the investor deck that we posted here this morning. So if you could pull it up and follow along, that would be great. So let’s start on page number four. Q3 was another great quarter for the company. Very, very solid quarter financially $291 million in EBITDA, that puts us well on track for our $1.1 billion goal for the year. It’s up significantly from Q3 a year ago of $170 million, and just in general, on a financial basis was actually -- was quite a productive quarter. In addition, we made significant progress on our two major aspects of our business, the supply side and the demand side. The supply side, of course, I am talking about the FLNG business. Chris will talk about that in some detail. We hosted a large group of investors, equity analysts, other participants last week down in Corpus Christi to share with them, not only the details of what we are actually doing down there, but also introduce them to the very talented team people that we have got who is executing for us and we feel great about that. On the demand side, there’s a lot to talk about. Andrew will spend a lot of time on that and it’s really a question of the two aspects of demand. In the short-term, the dislocation in the world is significant and we all know about that. We will talk about that specifically. Long-term, our mission to provide power to the places in the world that needed most is very much the mission of the company and the problems and the dislocations in the world that we have seen in Europe, in particular, have…

Chris Guinta

Management

Yeah. Good morning. Thanks, Wes. Let me let direct you to slide number nine and I will update you on our LNG supply portfolio and what we are actively doing to increase it specifically our fast LNG developments. On this slide, you can see substantial growth in the portfolio from 2021 through 2025. Our current supply contracts went from 74 TBtu last year to 88 TBTu this year will be 114 TBTu in 2023 through 2025. When you layer on FLNG volumes, we have an additional 350 TBtu or approximately 7 metric tons per annum coming online in the short-term. The first unit will begin operations in May or June 2023 and then the remaining five will turn on before the end of September 2024, so less than two years from now. This will result in 161 TBtu in volumes next year growing to 464 TBtu for 2025. Now let’s turn to slide number 10 and talk about the progress in LNG. As you know and many of you attended, we hosted an Investor and an Analyst event last week in Kiewit shipyard in Corpus Christi and it’s a great opportunity for us to give investors a glimpse of the progress we have made. As we mentioned on site, nothing that we are doing is overly complicated or difficult, but it does require the team to be organized, efficient and accountable to one another. The two key takeaways from the event last week and the highlights of the quarter are, one, we are making excellent progress on FLNG Number 1 and expect to achieve mechanical completion on March the 17th and then have the asset deployed and operating in May and COD in June 2023. Second, we made huge progress in the deployment options, including permits for our various locations,…

Andrew Dete

Management

Thanks, Chris. Hello, everyone. It’s great to be with you last week in Corpus Christi. Amazing what Chris and a lot of [ph] and the team have done. It was fun to stand on those rigs and kind of look out and see all the component parts about to be lifted on to them. And in my role on the commercial side, a very important moment for us. So as Chris just went through NFE is creating 7 MTPA of new volumes in the short-term. So that takes our total portfolio up from about 2 MTPA to 2.5 MTPA to 9.5 MTPA, which, as Chris showed is 464 TBtus by 2024 on a run rate basis. So I am on page 14 and what we want to do now is spend a minute to frame our long-term commercial strategy for selling these volumes in a way that creates long duration sustainable returns. And what you will see that the strategy is generally in line with the same core mission is he’s had since the beginning of expanding access to affordable power globally, which we think is both a good business and a great mission. And so on page 14 on the left side, what we are showing really is an energy density chart of the world. So the tagline is 70% of the world electricity is consumed by just 10 countries. And so what we see every day in these markets and what we believe is that these other countries that are less kind of energy dense are only going one way and that’s towards more energy consumption, more electricity consumption. I think I almost have to pay a royalty to Wes to say this. But as long followers and if you know, Jamaica consumes about tenth of what we…

Patrick Hughes

Management

Thanks, Andrew. I am on slide 21. We are just going to spend a few minutes talking about hydrogen. So we -- I guess, I’d start by saying we continue to make significant progress with the hydrogen business, what we are calling zero during the third quarter. And as Wes has said many times, we are very strong believers in the role that hydrogen will play as a cornerstone of a clean energy future. In particular, we think it plays a big role in difficult to abate sectors of the industrial economy, things like refining, petrochemicals, steel and cement manufacturing where you can have a real impact on decarbonization. But what we are also seeing, actually, especially in recent months, there’s a lot of related opportunities in kind of secondary and tertiary areas like transportation, hydrogen storage and renewable power, and we continue to look at a number of opportunities in those areas from a strategic perspective. All of that said, we are really in the early days of seeing a clean hydrogen economy really come to life. So let’s start with Beaumont and the asset we have talked to you about in past quarters and then we will step through a few other items before I turn the call back over to Chris. So we are proud to be -- a really true first-mover advantage in the space with our first industrial scale green hydrogen plant in Beaumont, Texas. We are building a 120-megawatt green hydrogen facility, which will be capable of producing 50 tons per day of green hydrogen, which is about 18,000 tons per year. At that level, it will be the biggest of its kind in the U.S. once it becomes operational, which we expect in 2024. Beaumont itself is a big industrial center in Southeast…

Chris Guinta

Management

Great. Thanks, Patrick. Please turn to slide 25. I will quickly run us through the financial performance for Q3. For the three months ended September 30, we had adjusted EBITDA of $291 million, which is approximately $1.2 billion on a trailing 12-month basis. The terminal segment operating margin was $251 million with another $88 million from the ship segment and you can find more detail in the appendix. Net income for the quarter, $86 million, which is about $0.41 per share when excluding onetime items. This quarter we sold 24 TBtus in total volumes, which equates to an average operating margin of around $15 per MMBtu, which obviously is in excess of what Andrew is saying we can do long-term. Henry Hub averaged 8.30 [ph], which is obviously a pass-through, but did have an effect both on revenue and costs over the period. Move to slide 26. We are showing a side by side of the balance sheet as it at June 30, 2022 versus where it is now, and as you can see, it’s a completely different picture. As a result of the incredible work of our M&A teams, we have executed on our promise to monetize over $2 billion worth of assets, which fully funds our growth initiatives. We have simplified the corporate debt to just two tranches of bonds at 6.75% and 6.5%, respectively. We also have $440 million revolver and a $250 million letter of credit facility, which provide us access to low cost flexible capital as needed is currently undrawn given our cash position. And lastly, we have the Jamalco bonds, which is an asset-level debt, non-recourse NFE, but it is consolidated in our balance sheet and thus included here. As you can see, the liquidity profile is strong with over $1.4 billion in available…

Patrick Hughes

Management

Thanks, Chris. So, Jake, I think, we are ready to take a couple of questions. So if you could explain the instructions to the callers that would be great. .

Operator

Operator

Of course. [Operator Instructions] And we will begin with Ben Nolan with Stifel.

Ben Nolan

Analyst

Yeah. Thanks. I appreciate the time here. I wanted to start a little bit just understanding on the FLNG side what goes where. It feels like the Altamira is first in line for the jackups and I guess that would mean that floaters would go to Louisiana. First of all, is that right, and if it is, does it change the MARAD process at all with respect to sort of approvals and time lines or anything like that?

Wes Edens

Management

Hey, Ben. It’s Wes. Good to see you last week. The -- as Chris said, we signed agreements with the Government of Mexico on Friday, right after our tour in Corpus. And so we have definitive agreements that allow us to place units into Altamira, which is great. So that gives us a lot of certainty that with say the FLNG business, there’s two things that matter. One is building the unit and two is having a place to put it. And so we feel great about our situation in Mexico and feel like this is the first of many different opportunities we have done there. Second, with respect to MARAD, we have a very engaged process with them. Our permitting team is in daily interactions with them at this point. As you know, there’s a 364-day period that they have to grant you a permit by statute. If they have questions along the line, they can stop the clock basically while they ask you to give them more detailed responses and then start the clock once they are satisfied that you have done so. We went through exactly this process here recently. So they stopped the clock on a project in the middle of August. They restarted the clock at the end of October, which we feel great about, and so both of those sites, we think, are very active candidates for the first of these units. I’d say at this point, Altamira has a modest lead because they are a little bit further along in the process. But our goal really for next year would be to deploy assets in both sides. That would give us the most diversification of the company would allow for incremental units to be applied in addition to that. So that’s where it is. So I’d say right now, we would be the first one midyear in Altamira, second one later in the year in Louisiana.

Ben Nolan

Analyst

Okay. And if it’s in Louisiana, if it’s a float or does that change the process at all?

Wes Edens

Management

We are really permitting both the floating rate, as well as the fixed platform in Louisiana. We expect to do both there. So either or, right? So I think as Chris laid out, we try to be very specific on this. We have got a pretty detailed view as to the calendar that goes on. So first one due out of the yard in March, second one in November and then every few months thereafter. So it gives us a lot of flexibility in terms of the nature of the infrastructure. Obviously, as we said before, the substance of the liquefiers are the same regardless of the marine infrastructure we install them on.

Ben Nolan

Analyst

Okay. Perfect. And I think I get an extra one. But just real quick, any update on Ireland, it has been sort of on and off, but where does it stand at the moment?

Andrew Dete

Management

Yeah. So we are in final review. Obviously, there’s been some dates that have previously been published by the permitting authorities in Ireland that have extended a bit. We think we are in a very good position there. There’s public comments now about the government supporting LNG and the security supply review that the government has gone through definitely recommends LNG and so we are working every day collaboratively to answer questions and do other things to kind of make sure our permit gets finalized here before the end of the year, but we are confident that it will happen. And that includes both the terminal and the 600 megawatts of power, which we want to make sure we are clear on as well.

Ben Nolan

Analyst

All right. I appreciate, Wes and Andrew. Thanks for the time.

Wes Edens

Management

Yeah. Thanks, Ben.

Operator

Operator

We will now move to Sam Margolin with Wolfe Research.

Sam Margolin

Analyst

Hey. Good morning, everybody. Thanks for taking the questions.

Wes Edens

Management

Hi.

Sam Margolin

Analyst

You pointed out in the prepared remarks that you are converting operating margin to cash much more efficiently this year and that’s great. As you stand up FLNG production, some things change with like working capital needs and how the financials come in and out. Can you talk a little bit about how -- anything that needs to happen with respect to the balance sheet or liquidity to manage working capital positions as you become a major LNG producer?

Chris Guinta

Management

Hey, Sam. It’s Chris. So short answer is, we don’t expect it to be a big working capital drain at all. In fact, like right now, we are buying LNG cargoes from the existing suppliers and prepay, that’s strictly a function of not being investment grade is common in the industry right now. When we start taking feed gas supply, what we have done is, the feed gas supply contracts that we will have in off of the sort of baseline from the CFE or in Louisiana will each be paid in arrears. And then in the case of Lakach, we actually are the people that are paying Pemex. So I expect that you will be able to be working capital positive in pretty short order. The actual turning on of the equipment, obviously, is not big spend, I mean, it’s labor and its power, which is functionally the cost of the feed gas that goes into the unit, so not expecting big drags at all. Importantly to note, I mean, we continue to upsize the revolver in the LC [ph] facility, which allow us a lot of flexibility, too. That’s cheap capital.

Sam Margolin

Analyst

That’s fantastic. Thanks. And then just a follow-up. As you -- as the slides indicate, the forward curve of TTF fully supports like this margin view after 2025. A lot of LNG capacity perspective, capacity works at like a $15 margin, a lot less works at, say, like a $3 to $4 margin, but I think that yours does. And so the question is, as you advance this term business, how competitive do you really want to be against this competing capacity as you sort of advance this strategy to deliver energy to energy in covered places? Thanks.

Wes Edens

Management

Yeah. I mean, the -- one of the reasons we had Andrew go through in detail what the economics are on the power side and the dimensions of the power shortage in the world is to show what the long-term path of the company was. We started creating our own supply long before these are crisis and we did so in order to satisfy what we view as a virtually inexhaustible amount of demand on the other side of it. The margins that you realize there are significant. If you look at our margins of $8, $12, $15 and you compare them to the margins -- published margins of the large gas producers at $1 or $3, $4, $5, obviously, they are materially higher. They are materially higher because it’s harder. You have to build terminals. You have to build infrastructure. You have to build power plants. You have to supply operations for it. If it was easy to make high margins everybody would have them. So we have made a profound effort on the downstream side to solve people’s problems and knock would have done so pretty successfully. One of the other things I think that is actually is underestimated is that, one of the measures of how successful that has been is the credit profile of that downstream activity is tremendous. So we just lived through a global pandemic still feeling the effects of it in many parts of the world. We have the areas that we do business in, among the hardest hit economically and we do not have a single dollar of late payments from any of them. Mean the service that we provide is critical, and they have to have power. They have to have energy were the most affordable options they have gotten. So even though it is significantly more commitment on resource and on capital and on time and on personnel, the sum of all those things is you end up with the downstream portfolio that complements your upstream portfolio, you generate higher margins and you are solving real-world problems rather than just being a wholesaler. So we are a retailer, not a wholesaler at every level and that’s a big commitment that you can see very visibly now what the benefits are just in terms of the economics that drop to the bottomline, but also the credit attributes of it and also just the mission in which we are trying to accomplish things, so.

Sam Margolin

Analyst

Thanks so much. Have great day.

Wes Edens

Management

Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Our next question will come from Sean Morgan with Evercore.

Sean Morgan

Analyst

Hey, guys. So the DOE application for Altamira, I think, it’s interesting. It looks like you are going to be able to potentially source gas from Baja, Build [ph], which has been a bit of a holy grail for U.S. exports, because people kind of view that gas generally is lower priced than some of the Henry Hub guests where there’s a lot more export capacity kind of servicing off of that. So when you guys think about you have to transport this gas a little further, there’s a couple of pipelines evolve I believe in terms of getting the gas wellhead to jetty, where do you think that your sort of export costs play out relative to some of the existing competition in the U.S. Gulf?

Wes Edens

Management

We think that the bottomline is that our economics are fairly similar, whether that we actually produce LNG in Agua Dulce gas down in Altamira or off the Coast Louisiana. I mean there’s obviously basin differential, transport costs, personnel costs and the, like, there’s a whole host of different reasons. But at the end of the day, it’s actually highly competitive in one place versus the other. Big picture, 97% of the world’s LNG today is produced on land, 3% at sea. Obviously, with these five developments that we are building right now, we immediately jumped to the top of the list of being the world leader in actually producing these. There’s only 16 units that exist in the world today, we are producing an additional five. So that makes us the world leader. That IP, I think, is incredibly valuable. So, obviously, what we are doing in the first couple of installations, because we are using existing pipeline gas from the U.S., which that’s a ready source of gas, it’s good pricing, it’s reliable and that’s a terrific place to do business. The development that we are working on with Pemex will be the first time we actually buy gas directly from a productive well offshore. We think that the implications for that long-term are extraordinary. And we think that the IP in order to build the equipment actually operate in those conditions allows us to access truly stranded gas and that’s the next increment of incremental benefit to us that is out there. So it’s a step-by-step analysis, but the direct answer to your question is we think the economics are roughly the same. There could be a plus or minus on either side of it, but they are not that differential when you take into account both basin differential, as well as transport. But we think that the next leg of it would be to actually source actually true standard stranded gas and that could be incrementally a very, very different result.

Sean Morgan

Analyst

Yeah. All right. That’s helpful, Wes. And just one quick follow-up on Altamira. So I think the application is looking for 2.1 and I think in last week, we talked about 1.4 export capacity in total. So the 2.1, is that just headroom in case you want to expand the Altamira project, and also, what’s the maximum that the existing pipeline infrastructure could sort of accommodate on a MTPA basis?

Chris Guinta

Management

Heading -- this is Chris. So, yes, we want excess headroom, exactly right. The pipeline capacity is 2.6 B a day. We understand that there’s active discussions to expand that capacity to a little bit above 3. The public filings indicate that historical use on the pipeline is around 20%. So the -- what we are really doing here is solving a problem NFE has, which is helping them defray some of the costs of their firm transportation and then also being a partner with them as we market the LNG globally.

Sean Morgan

Analyst

All right. Thanks, Chris. That’s it from me.

Chris Guinta

Management

Thanks, Sean.

Operator

Operator

We will now move to Sam Burwell with Jefferies.

Sam Burwell

Analyst

Hey. Good morning, guys. I wanted to hit on terminal sales and really the flexibility that you guys have to continue selling to third parties next year and I guess in 2024 as well, given that you have got some terminals that are due to come online? And sort of on that subject, slide 27, you mentioned seven terminals today, nine in 2024. So could you just run through what those seven are and then what the eighth one and ninth one would be?

Chris Guinta

Management

I am happy you are talking about the terminals. You don’t talk about the kind of downstream opportunities.

Wes Edens

Management

Yeah.

Chris Guinta

Management

So the seven terminals we are referencing are Old Harbour, Cammobay [ph], San Juan, La Paz, Puerto Sandino, Nicaragua, Barcarena, Santa Catarina. We expect to complete developments that we are in discussions on in Ireland and in South Africa, which takes us from the seventh to the ninth.

Andrew Dete

Management

Yes. On the first question, we -- there’s a couple of contracts I think will come on here through 2023 Norsk Hydro and Barcarena being the big one. Not sure I totally understood the question, but we will continue to turn on those contracts. I think we are showing 130 TBtus of kind of run rate 2023 volumes. So we have got a little bit of a bridge between kind of where we are now and where we will end 2023 with Norsk Hydro being the big part of that.

Sam Burwell

Analyst

Okay. That pretty much answers. Thanks. I guess the follow-up would be, on the MARAD process. I know you have talked about it in the prepared remarks and the Q&A already, but given your experience thus far, how it’s gone and what you have learned? How would you characterize the repeatability of the process and do you think it could be done more quickly going forward, because it strikes me that the U.S. Gulf of Mexico is probably a great place for you guys to scale up fast LNG beyond these first five units. So I am curious on your thoughts about that.

Wes Edens

Management

Well, the MARAD process involves a bunch of different agencies, right? And our interactions with them have been highly professional and very responsive. So we feel like they have done 100% of what they are obligated to do, both in letter and in script, and we feel great about that. When you look at what they have done historically, they have permitted, they are responsible for permitting all the fixed platforms in the Gulf, which is I don’t know what the actual number is, but it’s probably in the tens of thousands. So this is a very, very experienced group. And so what we are doing is really not that novel relative to what they have done. Obviously, the thing that is different is we are putting a liquefier on it. A liquefier has a power plant, because you need compression to turn that gas into LNG. So that’s that air permit is the one incremental difference, but it’s a modest difference and we feel their response has been entirely appropriate and engaged and very professional. And so with all that said, we obviously think it’s highly repeatable and there’s a variety of different locations that we have looked at, both in Louisiana, as well as in Texas, that would be logical places to have follow-on developments as and if this is successful, which we expect it to be, but it’s been great. And I think when the modular approach to building the liquefaction and putting it on existing marine infrastructure is, A, significantly cheaper and be significantly faster. And so when I referenced that 97%, 3% is the ratio of what it is today. I think it is very, very likely, i.e., 100% likely. That those numbers will shift over time, because this makes so much sense, not just for installations off the coast of the U.S. where it’s cheap and abundant gas. There is cheap and abundant gas all over the world. This allows us to go from one place to the other and cheaper and faster is simply better. So it’s great.

Sam Burwell

Analyst

All right. Thanks very much. Appreciate the color.

Operator

Operator

And moving on to Martin Malloy with Johnson Rice.

Martin Malloy

Analyst

Good morning. I have a question on zero. And I heard -- I’d like to get your thoughts about the offtake from that hydrogen facility and how you are thinking about the optionality. Obviously, there’s a lot of industrial load down in that area, but I believe Entergy also has a proposed power plant that’s pretty large. They can take hydrogen in and they have got some pipeline and underground storage assets as well. And also, I guess, related to that, how you are thinking about milestones in terms of scaling that up?

Patrick Hughes

Management

Yeah. Thanks, Marty. So you are absolutely right. There’s quite a bit of diversity in the offtake pool in the immediate vicinity. I am talking about literally within hundreds of feet and then within a couple of miles. So you are touching on the -- so the refining sort of community is the number I gave you before, which is 1,000 tons per day of hydrogen demand just among the three or four that are right there, and again, we are producing 50 tons. So as you can imagine, we are quite popular and a lot of folks looking at the 50 ton a day of green hydrogen, which is a pretty unique offering. We are also indeed working with Entergy on their needs in the region on the power side, the facility you are talking about is called Orange County Advanced Power Station, and they have a significant need over time as well. And then I mentioned the storage and the transportation. So you have things like Spindletop and a number of other existing pipeline networks to move the hydrogen kind of all around the region. So a lot of options for us and what we are trying to do basically is look at how to optimize that first phase. And then it’s -- the good news about electrolyzers is fairly straightforward to scale, because it’s just -- it’s largely a function of just adding units. So the first 120 will be 2024 and then we can add units thereafter as the demand picks up and there’s more of a need for green hydrogen in the region.

Wes Edens

Management

Yeah. I mean bottomline though is that you are producing hydrogen inclusive of the production credit is something close to zero.

Patrick Hughes

Management

Yeah.

Wes Edens

Management

And obviously, the economics of that are very powerful and people are willing to pay a market price for it. As Patrick said, the dimensions of what’s needed is vastly greater than what’s been produced. So this is, well, I think, it’s the upside in hydrogen production, green hydrogen production, blue hydrogen production, not just in the U.S. but across the world is immense. The fact is that today, it’s a hobby. It’s a relatively small part of the overall energy landscape. It’s something that I think is the Inflation Reduction Act actually provides capital to a number of different aspects of it, including the production of it, but also batteries, including carbon capture and storage. There’s a number of different aspects of it that are actually very powerful. And the demand, in my opinion, for green hydrogen is virtually inexhaustible period and we can do so at economic levels. And so this has gone from a business that is actually marginally profitable, but still something which would be interesting, something that is absolutely profitable and then could be expanded greatly. And so, but you can’t build a second until you built the first, and so that’s what we are very focused on right now. And then I think you hope for efficiencies across the entire landscape, so not just in the production of the hydrogen, but the transport of it, the utility of it, all the different aspects of it that actually will make this be something that’s not a hobby that actually does then put a material role in decarbonization.

Martin Malloy

Analyst

Great. And my second question, I just wanted to try to get your thoughts on progress towards investment grade rating and do you think you will have to get a few of these fast LNG projects up and running before you are able to achieve that?

Wes Edens

Management

Well, if the rating agents are listening in and hope that they are, we think we should be investment grade now. I mean the cash flow generation and the conversion of EBITDA to free cash flow is significant and all seriousness. And the rate agents been great partners with us along the way. We have had a great dialogue with them, really post this earnings as we intend to go back and revisit with them. One thing that we want to get credit from the rating agencies, we want to get credit from the equity analysts and the investment community broadly is, the dimensions of the cash flow generation that we are about to experience are tremendous. I mean it’s not an overstatement to say when you look at the 500 companies in the S&P 500, there is a handful of those and maybe even none of those that actually generated $5 billion in EBITDA in their first 10 years of existence. And so we have an extraordinary opportunity as a company to produce a meaningful amount of cash flow and have done so largely without raising other people’s capital, it’s been internally generated. And so when rating agencies, when equity analysts, when investors look at our business, it’s not just the generation of the cash flow. The question is, can you do it without asking other people for money and that actually is a question that we can answer with a resounding, yes. When I say we have got a significant amount of cash on balance sheet which we do and we expect to generate a lot more. And the repeatability, the sustainability of it is, of course, that all of those three counterparties are very, very invested in. That’s why Andrew and others spent a lot of time…

Martin Malloy

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

We will now move to a question from Greg Lewis with BTIG.

Greg Lewis

Analyst

Yeah. Thank you and good morning, everybody and realizing we are on the hour, I will just ask one question. Wes, as we think about the cadence surround the fast LNG and I guess right now, there’s seven MTPA on the Board. Clearly, you guys are seeing opportunity in the market, but would you keep going back to the bigger picture. As we think about the gating factor in terms of how big your FLNG solution can be, is the right way to think about it that eventually, we are going to hit a point where we are servicing our projects in the Caribbean, our projects in Brazil and elsewhere, i.e., is that kind of we are building these units with an eye on meeting our demand for these projects as we see them in the future or will we always be or do you see a scenario where you are always in a normalized environment down the road selling gas into the open market outside of your company’s end markets?

Wes Edens

Management

Yeah. That is actually a spectacular question and it’s -- I will tell you my perspective on it, but it’s not possible to really predict the future. We size our FLNG production initially to meet the demand that we saw visibly in the markets that we service. That said, we are servicing a fraction of what the actual needs are in places like Mexico or Brazil or South Africa or Ireland even. So the upside to just build the infrastructure and continue to grow organically in those markets is tremendous. Now the question longer term is when I addressed earlier is, what is the new normal when you are all done with this, and I think that, that’s obviously a debate, not an answer, and there’s a lot of different elements to it. The one thing I would say is that the downstream portfolio, we know that it’s a great addendum to the business because it provides duration. So when people talk about returns, they should also be talking about duration. I have sat across the desk as many of you have from 1 million people in my life have told me they could make 15% or 20% or some investment return. The reality is the people that can make 20% returns for 25 years, are named Warren Buffett and just a few others. So duration really matters and the duration that we get from these long-term portfolios is significantly valued. I think it’s undervalued, significantly so right now, by the way, both in terms of the quantum of the earnings that we have, as well as the complete durability about them. One other thing that is actually underestimated in my opinion is that the flexibility that is granted to you when you actually enter in these long-term contracts is…

Patrick Hughes

Management

Jake, I think given that we are at the top of the hour. This is Patrick. We would like to maybe close the call. I suspect we might still have more questions. So by all means for those who may not have gotten their questions answered, please feel free to reach out to me. So, Jake, if you could close down the call that would be great.

Operator

Operator

Of course. Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude your conference for today. We do thank you for your participation and you may now disconnect.