Good day and welcome to the CNX Resources 3rd Quarter 2026 Q&A conference call. All participants will be in the Sonali mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by 0. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then 1 on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, press star then 2. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Tyler Lewis. Please go ahead.

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 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 3Q2026, 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 in 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, and operator, can you please open the call up for Q&A at this time?

Yes, thank you.

We will now begin the question and answer session.

To ask a question, you may press star then 1 on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw it, please press star then 2. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble the roster. And the first question comes from Gabriel Aoud with Truist.

Thanks, operator. Morning, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. I 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. So curious maybe how that would kind of translate into your thoughts on 27, just given where gas prices are.

Yeah, hey, Gabe. Thanks for the question. Where we sit right now, so we're pretty much on the five-year average for storage levels. We'll be close to four T's going into winter. Right now, we're not given 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 in steady state. And obviously, if it sort of degrades from here, we'll make adjustments as necessary.

Okay, okay, thanks, Alan. So maintenance for now, like not below maintenance given prices on the screen currently. You feel good with still maintenance?

Yeah, we're pretty agile in the 27. So, you know, we're a little bit different shape than most folks. So right now we'd still be in the maintenance mode mindset. Right, right, okay.

Okay, great. That's helpful. And then my follow-up would be another, I guess, higher-level question. A big merger in Basin this week was announced, as I'm sure you're all aware. We'd love to hear your thoughts maybe on the transaction and just M&A and Appalachia more generally.

Yeah, 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 combined company does in terms of production levels and things like that, but not much color to provide from our side on it.

Okay, and just seeing X's appetite for M&A at this stage?

Yeah, so 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, but It's just one of the things we review. And 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.

Thank you. And the next question comes from Lou Mariani with Roth. Hey, Leo.

Hey, guys. Hi. I 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, another is steel. But our overall impact to our program is less than 1% of our capital. So not much impact moving forward for us.

Yeah, 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 frack fleets. We have intensive sort of in water transportation, right? We don't run a lot of water trucks and things like that. So as Nav mentioned, our exposure to those two categories are pretty limited, moving into the 27, but there is certainly increases there, as everyone's seen.

Okay, appreciate that. And 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 area. As you think about that, are you contemplating any kind of new midstream build-out you think might be necessary to kind of get some of that deeper Utica in central Pennsylvania online several years down the road?

Yeah, as we sort of move through that CPA field, right, we're going to develop that as efficiently as possible, right? You know, 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.

Thank you. And the next question comes from Phil Jungworth with BMO.

Yeah, thanks. Good morning. Previously, you talked about 40,000 to 50,000 Southwest PA Marsalis 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?

Yeah, obviously the developing what's remaining in the Southwest PA area on the Marcellus front is 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? So there's another four to five years sort of to develop the rest of that. And then the program shifts over to CPA Utica predominantly with CPA Marcellus as we call that area. and then ultimately you would return back to Southwest PA for Southwest PA Utica and other horizons later on down the road.

Okay, great. And 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 a 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?

Yeah, so the way we think about it is sort of a capital efficiency metric. So all in with the capital infrastructure and the DNC, you're calling that capital 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. But 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? So that's really where our focus is. And every time we go back to a new pad there, that's where we're being intentful.

Great. Thanks.

Thank you. The next question comes from Michael Scalia with Stevens.

Hi, good morning. Good 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.

Yeah, excited to have Ravi. Great to have an in-house candidate with his sort of background and skill set to sort of step in the role. I'm not going to add anything additional on sort of the Everett departure outside what was in the 8Ks.

Okay, fair enough. I guess thinking long-term, been some pretty robust natural gas demand forecasts out there. I guess I wanted 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?

Yeah, 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 2Bs or 20Bs, time will tell, right? I mean, there's still a lot of uncertainty on the ultimate end users in terms of AI and things like that. But 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. So 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.

Thank you. And once again, please press star then one if you would like to ask a question. And the next question comes from Betty Jang with Barclays.

Good morning. Hi, Betty. Hey, good morning. First on the gas differential, like 3Q differential is a bit wider than where we were expecting. So just wondering if there's anything in particular that impacted DIF. And could you remind us, what's your InBasin exposure?

Yeah, I mean, our InBasin exposure is two-thirds. Yeah, two-thirds of the whole portfolio, right? Been challenging up here InBasin with sort of the weather and the softness. You know, any given day, our team's out there optimizing. You know, 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 Mishcon or other places.

You guys don't subscribe to the curtailment strategy, right? Was there any curtailment impact?

Yeah, no, great question, Betty. So there's been some periods over the last couple months where gas has dropped sub $1. Because we hedged, there's not a lot we need to do in terms of shut-ins, but there's been a couple of stretches where we have curtailed volumes. It's been less than a B, though, probably for the whole quarter, so we haven't. sort of spiked that out. But we definitely are, you know, 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. And then another question on capital allocation. It's the second quarter in the row now that you laying down the balance sheet bet for a pretty outsized buyback. Is that a level that something that you will continue to do? And is there a limit on how much William, if you're willing to maybe draw on the balance sheet on the revolver?

Yeah, you know, 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. But I think if you look back at the history of what we've done, we've sort of stepped on the gas and we see the sort of sector trade off and we, you know, blade off when the sector gets a little more bid to it. But longer term, we still view every share we repurchase as a sort of great opportunity to create long-term for share value. particularly when we think about, you know, the question about long-term gas demand, right? Like instead of growing production, you can, you know, grow production per share by repurchasing shares, right? That's another way to do it, so.

Right. Makes sense. Thank you.

Thank you. And we have another question from Mike Sciarra with Stevens.

I 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? And if so, what sort of timeframe should we be thinking about these like toward the end of the decade or could they be sooner than that?

Yeah, we're certainly in the mix with everybody else here in the basin on some of these discussions. I mean, 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? So that's been the challenge. So 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.

Gotcha. You mentioned gas. A little bit about Deep Utica. Should we be thinking for 27, similar kind of program 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?

Yeah, I think the mix sort of looks like this year. I don't want to give you the precise numbers because I don't know how to pop my head, but the mix is we're blending in Deep Utica with the remaining sort of southwest PA that we've talked about, and any given year I wouldn't get too to engage 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 to the next couple decades. Great.

Thanks, Alan.

Yep.

Thank you. And this concludes our question and answer session. I will turn the conference back over to Tyler Lewis for any closing comments.

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.

Thank you. The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. We now disconnect your lines.