Participants

Tyler Lewis; VP, Investor Relations; CNX Resources Corp

Alan Shepard; Chief Financial Officer; CNX Resources Corp

Zach Parham; Analyst; JP Morgan

Leo Mariani; Analyst; Roth Capital Partners

Gabe Daoud; Analyst; TD Cowen

Noah Hungness; Analyst; Bank of America

Jake Roberts; Analyst; TPH

Presentation

Operator

Good day. And welcome to the CNX Resources first quarter 2025 Q&A conference call. (Operator Instructions)
Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Tyler Lewis, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Tyler Lewis

Thanks and good morning to everybody. Welcome to CNX's first quarter Q&A conference call. Today, we will be answering questions related to our first quarter results. This morning, we posted to our Investor Relations website, an updated slide presentation.
In detailed first quarter earnings release data such as quarterly ENP data, financial statements, and non-GAAP reconciliations, which can be found in a document titled [1Q] 2025 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 Nick Deluliis, our President and CEO; Alan Shepard, 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. Our actual results may differ materially as a result of many factors.
A discussion of the 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 this time?

Question and Answer Session

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Zach Parham, JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Zach Parham

Hey, thanks for taking my question. I guess first, just wanted to ask on activity levels, you all had a significant amount of turning lines in one cue with 19. Can you talk about the rest of the turning lines here in the year? When do those come in line and maybe comment on what the production trajectory should look like through the back half of the year and maybe in 2026?

Alan Shepard

Yeah. Hey, this is Alan. A lot of those tills came in line for the later part of the first quarter. As we mentioned on the last call, the bulk of some of our completion activity was going to be scheduled in the first half of the year. So you'll see a few more tills in Q2, and probably a lull in Q3, and then some additional tills coming in in Q4.

Zach Parham

Thanks. And then just wanted to follow up on the 4Q call, you talked about having the flexibility to add some activity to the program in the second half of the year.
Given the volatility we've seen in gas prices, how are you thinking about flexing that activity? And maybe talk about the timeline on when you would have to make a decision on whether or not to add some activity?

Alan Shepard

Yeah, right now, there's no planned changes to the activity set. We'll kind of watch it through this part of the shoulder season here. And we're see where end of summer storage is targeting and go off that as our cue.

Operator

Leo P. Mariani, Roth Capital Partners.

Leo Mariani

Hey, just a couple of quick questions here on some of the numbers here. Looks like you guys actually paid some cash taxes in the first quarter. A little bit surprising.
Generally, thought you guys weren't going to be paying much on the cash tax side, just curious if that was kind of a one off. And then just on the buyback kind of very robust number here in first quarter, $125 million, pretty big number. Is it fair to think that kind of around this $30 level, you guys think it's a pretty compelling, investment here in the buyback?

Alan Shepard

Yeah, on the cash taxes front, we're still a de minimis cash taxpayer. If you're seeing noise trying to reconcile deferred tax to things, that's basically from the hedge book. We don't become a material tax cash payer until about $3 billion in cumulative free cash flow, which is the current projection called sometime 27, 28, as we've talked about previously.
There is a little bit of state tax starting to starting to hit, but again, that's all very de minimis. In terms of your latter question, yeah, I think, we're always -- we see value in kind of the repurchases when we do them as part of our process. Okay.

Leo Mariani

I appreciate that. And I just wanted to ask if you guys have got any kind of further intel in terms of how the Trump administration might be looking at changes in 45Q here?

Alan Shepard

No, we don't have anything outside of what's in the public domain.

Tyler Lewis

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Gabe Daoud, TD Cohen.

Gabe Daoud

Thanks. Hey, morning, everyone. Maybe just following up on Zach's question earlier. Could you maybe just give us a sense then of what volume trajectory looks like? Imagine just giving a heavy first half, you're declining into the second half and probably into ‘26.
So what's the production level that you guys would like to hold flat into 26? Is it 1.4 be a day on the gas side? And if that's the case, what's the CapEx level needed to hold that flat into 2026?

Alan Shepard

Yeah, I think if you take kind of the till comments I made earlier, you can kind of infer from that. If you want to do quarterly production again, we don't get too tied up in looking at quarterly production and even annual production levels.
We have kind of a range, we've been in the last few years. And I would expect going forward, we would be in that sort of range plus, the volumes associated with Apex. But again, we're so for free cash flow per share as opposed to any particular production level target.

Gabe Daoud

Understood, thanks for that. And then I guess just as a follow up, some M&A in your backyard, recently, maybe just any kind of updated thoughts on the transaction that just changed hand recently in Westmoreland and generally your views on future opportunities in the area. Thanks, guys.

Alan Shepard

Yeah. No, we think it kind of reinforces what we've been saying for the last decade, which is that particular area of the basin is some of the best rock that's going to be moving forward.
So, from our perspective, we have significant anchorage position up there. And we're excited to have a new neighbor that's kind of validated our thesis on the area.

Gabe Daoud

Got you. Thanks, guys.

Operator

Noah Hungness, Bank of America.

Noah Hungness

Good morning, guys. For my first question here, I was hoping to ask you on slide 6. It looks like your IMAX and NGL pricing has kind of declined as you guys kind of mark to market, with strip moving down, and then also the natural gas differentials seem to have widened a bit, but your free cash flow guidance for the year is unchanged.
So could you kind of walk us through some of the potential improvements in the base business that's kind of driving that free cash flow resiliency?

Alan Shepard

Yeah. It's a reminder we're 85% hedge. So when you see the open volumes pricing change, you're really talking about just call it three quarters of exposed pricing at this point on 15% of the volume. So there's not a huge amount of wiggle room associated with open pricing left for the full year.
And then, the free cash flow guidance we give, it's a point number, but it's really sort of a range around a number. So get overly specific and trying to reanalyze it, we'll be in that range and we're reaffirming that range.

Noah Hungness

And then we've seen some PowerGen and data center announcements in that kind of in that southwest central PA area. And I was just kind of hoping to get your guys' latest view on how you see in base and demand developing and if you think we'll continue to see announcements over the next 6 to 12 months?

Alan Shepard

Yeah, in my opinion, I think you're going to see a lot of announcements. And we'll see how many of those translate into actual construction.
Overall, bullish for all the operators in the basin, very similar to any sort of utility coming in. I'm sure everyone will be able to benefit from the increase in basin demand and shrinking of differentials associated with that. So we'll see which ones actually developed, but generally, a great back when to have for everyone.

Noah Hungness

I'm good, guys. Thanks.

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Jake Roberts, TPH.

Jake Roberts

Morning. Fine, I was hoping to hear some thoughts about the Apex turning lines that happened during the quarter, just how those are performing relative to the base business and the outlook there.?

Alan Shepard

Doesn't have a, yeah, the [8 wells] that we bought online from Apex, they are pretty releasing, better than we expected. So we are pretty optimistic about the long-term production on these wells.

Jake Roberts

Great, thanks. And my second question, I think you guys have spoken to there not necessarily being a correlation between attribute sales and the Buchanan power facility.
Just hoping to clarify if that facility showing up on the PJM deactivation list will have any impact on that segment or if there are any other of those types of deactivations we might need to be thinking about?

Alan Shepard

That won't have any impact on our EA sales. We use multiple facilities across PJM to create those credits.

Jake Roberts

Thanks, appreciate the time.

Operator

This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Tyler Lewis for any closing remarks.

Tyler Lewis

Great. Thank you again for joining us this morning. Please feel free to reach out if anyone has any additional questions. Otherwise, we look forward to speaking with everyone again next quarter. Thank you.

Operator

The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.