Our first question or comment comes from the line of Arun Jayaram from JPMorgan.

Mike, I wanted to get your thoughts on how you think the Twin Eagle acquisition aligns with Expand's overall strategy?

Thank you for the question, Arun. Overall, we said in our first -- my first call here in February that we're going to focus on our M&C business. And that focus has turned into integrated gas company. And that is the bigger vision on how to go customer back because we think this is a demand-pull future as opposed to a supply future. So if you think, that's the #1 goal is to get customers. Twin Eagle has that. It has over 1,000 customers. That business is based on those relationships. They've had them for 8 years. And so we know it's repeatable. So if you think about integrated gas supply, we believe by having a national footprint, 1,000 customers, Twin Eagle is a perfect fit for us.

Great. And just my follow-up, Mike, just in terms of the broader landscape. One of your peers in the Appalachia Basin, which also has an integrated model, similar scale has been able to ink several natural gas supply deals with utilities power projects for data centers, et cetera. I want to get your thoughts on whether you view the Twin Eagle acquisition with your expanded transportation portfolio, customer intimacy, do you view this as an enabler to get supply deals for Expand called over the line?

I absolutely do think that. Of course, we have a large position in Appalachia. We will absolutely look for deals there as well. But what Twin Eagle gives us is it gives us the whole United States as our playground. There are utilities all over the country, near population centers. We're building data centers. We don't think data centers will only be in the East. We think they'll be all over. Twin Eagle already has long relationships with utility companies. They will ultimately be the big winner here, in my opinion. And so the footprint is what will make us special.

Our next question or comment comes from the line of Josh Silverstein from UBS.

A question on capital allocation between the balance sheet and shareholder returns. You clearly bought back a significant amount of stock and just authorized another $1 billion buyback. But now you're buying Twin Eagle with the balance sheet and cash on hand. So how do you flex between the 2 going forward?

Josh, Marcel here. So when you think of the overall capital allocation framework, right, our #1 priority is to reinvest in our ongoing business, keep that engine going. So that's our D&C capital. Our second priority is dividend. We have a good and healthy dividend. So we continue to pay that. The third priority is our balance sheet, and we've made great strides in that in Q1, and that kind of allowed us to have some flexibility as we went into the second quarter, as Mike talked about. And then the remaining cash, we'll allocate to the highest kind of returning kind of opportunity that we have, and that could include buying back our own stock that is competing with other opportunities that we have. Specifically to the money spent on Twin Eagle, it is a big amount. But for our company, we can absorb this within the facilities we have. We have ample liquidity. So I expect that over the next quarter, we can do both balance sheet and looking at other opportunities to that return -- that make good returns for shareholders as well.

Got it. And then maybe sticking on the cash flow statement. The CapEx trajectory was obviously a bit elevated this quarter. The 3Q guide was higher versus expectations. Can you just talk about the trajectory of this maybe into what's implied for the fourth quarter? And how much of it was service inflation versus just a good opportunity to step up the leasing efforts because it looks like you added a lot in the Haynesville and Appalachia?

Josh, we would expect that the capital will tail off as we go through the second half of the year. The first thing I would just note is that we do have a little bit less D&C activity in the second half of the year, primarily across our Appalachia business. On the second quarter specifically, we continue to find great opportunities to go out and add organic leases. This is, of course, we're able to leverage our operational and subsurface expertise, identify opportunities to get in early at a lower cost, which simply preserves our ability to generate premium returns off of that acreage in the long run. In addition, we like the acreage that we're getting because it's also providing real growth optionality for us as a company as we're looking at a pretty significant demand growth as we exit the decade. There has been an element of realized inflation in the second quarter. And so just depending on where we see crude prices go, that will impact what we pay for fuel. And so that's all accounted for within our full year guide. The fourth quarter as a whole also, I would just note that you do tend to see leasing activity ramp down in the fourth quarter. And that's really just you just simply lose working days with the holidays. And so that does tend to lend itself to lower overall spend. But I would just note that we want to continue to be opportunistic. Financially, we're strong enough to be active out acquiring organic leases. We think it's a fantastic investment for the company. And if we continue to find these new opportunities, that would end up pushing us towards the higher end of our capital range for the full year.

Our next question or comment comes from the line of Charles Meade from Johnson Rice.

I wanted to ask another question on Twin Eagle and maybe there's 2 parts to this. Can you describe for us the -- what relationships you may have had with Twin Eagle in the past, like for example, whether they were marketing some of your volumes, if there's any history between Expand and Twin Eagle? And also, when you look at the assets you acquired, of course, the people are a big part of it. But one of the biggest tangible pieces, it seems to me is this 44 Bcf of storage. And I'm wondering if you could talk about how you value that, whether it was you valued it separately or whether that's just -- it's just part of the whole -- just in the overall evaluation.

Sure, sure. Thank you, Charles, for the question. Of course, Twin Eagle has actually been around a long time. I mean this is the original Dynegy team that spun out. And they've been doing this exact business for 30 years. The Twin Eagle team today, of course, is 15 in the latest iteration. Fun, at one point in time, Chesapeake was one of the equity owners of Twin Eagle which got sold in the past. So we've had a long relationship with them just in general. We don't sell a lot of gas to them historically, so there's not a lot of overlap. They focus a little bit more downstream from where most of our sales have been and so -- which is what we like. We want to extend our reach and they provide that reach. So we've known them for a long time. We have a perfect culture fit in that -- of course, they're here in our Spring complex, actually in our complex. And so they'll be moving to our building ultimately, but same type of people, the kids go to the same schools that our employees go to. And so it's a great cultural fit as well. Storage specifically, we thought about storage is how do they achieve their returns, not specifically the storage assets themselves. It's how that translate into earnings and their ability to have repeat earnings. And that's the same way we looked at their FT and their AMA. It's like what do they do with it more than exactly that specific asset.

That is great detail. And then my follow-up is perhaps for Josh. The 33,000 acres that you guys picked up, I think it was in Sabine in Natchitoches Parish in Louisiana and the Natchitoches Fault Zone. Can you talk about what you're seeing differently or what you're doing differently that now makes that acreage prospective for you where presumably, since it was sitting there unleased and open, it wasn't prospective for you or other Haynesville players so far?

Yes. Charles, thanks for the question. I think this really just comes down to if you think about the Southwestern merger, us being in a position to deliver a tremendous amount of synergies through this continued operational excellence. I think we continue to establish ourselves in the Haynesville as the best operator in these deep, high-pressure gas wells. And that's exactly what we find in this NFZ -- what we refer to as the NFZ extension. We are stepping down deeper into the Haynesville and Bossier. You end up moving down another 2,000 feet in true vertical depth. But we are made to go operate and develop these deep complex high-pressure reservoirs. We also just have a ton of subsurface information that we've built up over the last 1.5 decades of operating in the basin. And so that just puts us in a technical and operational advantage to get into these plays early before others are fully valuing it and go in, in this case, acquiring over 100 locations at less than $0.5 million a location. And so we feel really great about this position that we're building. Our goal is to always look at rock in a way that maybe today, it looks like Tier 2, and we're going to go make it Tier 1, and we see that same type of upside with this opportunity here.

Next question or comment comes from the line of Matthew Portillo from TPH. Matthew Portillo I just wanted to start out on the Gulf Coast, specifically hearing more from the industry around Southeast demand from utilities and the interplay between that demand pull and the start-up of LNG facilities that's really starting to create an interesting dynamic. So I'm curious if you might be able to comment on how you all are seeing the marketing opportunity set evolve as it relates to utilities. Does this potentially down the road between utilities and LNG create a premium market strategy for you all in terms of pricing or the ability to lay off FT? Just hoping you could give us an update on how the market is evolving around the Haynesville given that you are the largest producer.

Matt, this is Dan. We remain very constructive around demand. We put a page together. I believe it's on Page 15 of our deck, looking at demand. And this is really a historic wave of structural demand that's coming at us. You hit many aspects there, power, industrial, LNG. On the power side, we tend to be more conservative than others, but still significant demand and really electrification is growing. Data centers is a big story, but there's also microgrid solutions and just balancing of markets. This is evidenced in the last few weeks. We've seen record demand prints for the U.S. We hit an all-time high a couple of weeks ago of 101 terawatts. So this is growing and real. Again, we are kind of on the conservative side. Industrial, same thing. This is often part of the market that's missed and it's really in our backyard down in the Haynesville area, the amount of expansions happening at manufacturing sites. And then we're under some confidential conversations with new sites being contemplated for the back half of the decade. So we're excited about that. And then LNG, this is real and it's real structural. We actually updated our demand. So we're a bit more bullish on LNG. We've seen some accelerated projects happening. We've seen more FIDs taking place. So really the confluence of all these demands coming together right in our backyard in Haynesville and Appalachia really sets up nice for our business. And again, Mike said it earlier, this is a demand pull. So we have a lot of customers coming to see us being able to offer them different products, structural products, long-term products. That's something the Expand footprint allows. And then adding Twin Eagle to this just makes us even integrated and more strong and enhanced. Having that coast-to-coast footprint and being able to offer different types of products is going to be real beneficial for us and a differentiator. Matthew Portillo Great. And then the second question, just on broader capital allocation trends. Obviously, the 2027 strip has come under pressure and maybe some of the smaller privates and smaller publics have been a bit more growth focused in the near term. Just curious, given how large your footprint is across the U.S. being the largest gas producer kind of across the U.S. and as you guys think about capital allocation, if the market does require growth from Expand down the road, is it still fair to think about with the slide you guys laid out on Slide 6, that you probably need to see something in the $3.75 to $4 mid-cycle case for growth to return from a larger producer like yourself?

Yes. The view on mid-cycle price is absolutely driving how we think about capital allocation back into our business. We think the $3.50 to $4 range still fits. We think that's the prices that will be required to balance the market ultimately. And so as we think about heading in towards the end of the decade, where you start to see larger demand growth, Dan just referenced specifically the LNG, power and industrial demand growth that we see. And so if we start to adjust up that view on mid-cycle price, this business is positioned to grow. And it's not just in the depth of our inventory, but it's also the access to infrastructure that the company maintains specifically across the Haynesville asset. We've talked about the NFZ extension earlier, that's adding locations that creates a real growth option with unconstrained infrastructure. We have our East Texas position that we're building. We are well positioned, especially where we sit on the cost curve to be out in front. And if, again, the supply-demand fundamentals support it, we are in a position to go grow.

Our next question or comment comes from the line of Doug Leggate from Wolfe Research.

Guys, I've got 2 questions, if I may. I'm looking at -- I think it's -- I'm looking at Slide #7, which is the drilling efficiency, the improvement, obviously, pretty impressive. But my question is, at some point, should we expect the improved capital efficiency, if you like, to translate to a lower CapEx number? Because it seems that you're doing -- you've got the capacity to do more with less, if you like, given that you haven't changed your production guidance. That's my first. My second one is a follow-up, if you don't mind, on Twin Eagle. The $200 million, obviously, and the synergies, you guys have got a track record, forgive me for this, of being somewhat conservative on your synergies. So I'm curious how you would frame the risk of delivering the $250 million. And I'm excluding the extra $100 million because you already had $500 million in your own numbers. And I guess my point is where -- what's the trajectory? And what's the impact on your breakeven?

Doug, this is Josh. I'll take the first part of your question. And I think really what you're getting at is, is there an expectation that our maintenance CapEx adjust given the -- some deficiencies that we're seeing. I think at a corporate level, we still see our maintenance CapEx kind of ex growth leasehold and growth D&C spend in the East Texas position, still sitting around that $2.8 billion level. There has been some headwinds on the CapEx front, just primarily through higher fuel costs in the year. So that will serve as a bit of an offset to the efficiency gains. But I think we continue to unlock ways at which we improve our capital efficiency -- of course, the great execution results that we've seen in Southwest Appalachia is one example. We also highlight in the slide deck on Page 8, what we're achieving with our enhanced completions in the Haynesville, which has the ability to increase our per well production to the tune of about 5% to 10%. And most importantly there, that's really about flattening that year 2 and year 3 decline rate. So those things will ultimately translate into our 2027 maintenance capital level. So I do expect as we head into next year on a maintenance CapEx level that we do see some modest improvements year-over-year.

Dan, let me pick up on your second question. So the first bit was on the $200 million of acquired EBITDA of Twin Eagle, right? So that's kind of what we call our base EBITDA or their base EBITDA, and they've been consistently delivering that over the last couple of years in a low volatility kind of part of the market. When there's volatility, that number could be 1.5 to 2x of that particular number. So -- but we have kind of guided to the normal volatility type of range. $250 million of synergies, I think you're right. We have a track record of over-delivering and being conservative of that, and we'll do everything that we can to squeeze that out and to accelerate delivery of that. We're pretty excited about bringing together kind of our supply and financial strength, can do with the capabilities and relationships and the infrastructure that Twin Eagle team have and when we bring that together, what it can unlock. Just then to the breakeven question, right? So on an excluding dividend basis, which is probably most comparable to others, we're around $2.70 today. The acquisition itself will reduce that breakeven by about $0.05 to $0.10 with the synergies, that's about $0.10 to $0.15. And if you include the full $750 million of M&C delivery, which we shared in our deck, that's around a $0.30 breakeven improvement overall. So here, you got all the stats.

Our next question or comment comes from the line of Scott Hanold from RBC Capital Markets.

My first question is also on Twin Eagle. And I'd be interested to see if you all could compare and contrast the advantages of this more commercial strategy for integration versus owning midstream assets, so more of the asset-heavy kind of opportunity. So can you compare and contrast the 2 kind of the advantages and disadvantages of those strategies?

Maybe I'll start, and I'll let Marcel jump in. Generally, we consider this a capital-light opportunity. So we are reaching premium markets in a bigger footprint for a lot less money upfront. That generally goes to superior returns. That was part of our -- part of the thesis of why we wanted to do this particular transaction. After that, it doesn't mean we won't do things like NG3, which is, hey, if we can do midstream deals and partnerships that help us get our gas to better markets, and we'll use Twin Eagle to go and market around that, we would do those types of things. Being a midstream company is not what we are. We're not a midstream company. We're not trying to be a midstream company. We think there are a lot of great ones out there. Williams does a great job. Kinder Morgan does a great job. And so that's a hard place for us to compete. We prefer to compete on the customer basis on an upstream basis. But if we have opportunities to unlock our gas to go further and increase our prices, we're going to do that. Anything to add?

Nothing.

And my follow-up is just on the Western Haynesville. Can you give us a sense of what you've seen from the first well so far and on the cost side? And at some point in time, do you think this can compete with the greater portfolio?

Thanks, Scott. Josh here. We've been really pleased with what we've seen both from an execution and early productivity in the Western Haynesville. It's incredibly complex. It's deep. You're over 17,000 feet deep there, and so costs are high. We absolutely see line of sight through improved drilling techniques, better completion designs, not just to drive down cost over time, but also to further enhance well productivity. That play for us. I would just note this is truly considered exploratory in nature. There are still a lot of things that we have to learn. But what we love about it is the upside of growth that it provides for the company. We do have ways to go, I would say, to further appraise it. We just finished drilling our second well in the play in the second quarter. That was just a vertical test well to further delineate the reservoir. Pleased with what we've seen there, and we'll drill a third well later in the year. The first well is on production. That data is now in the public domain. I've been pretty pleased with the productivity, high pressures. And so it does have the making. But again, this is something for us that we put in the appraisal stage. And we really have that luxury simply because of the depth of inventory that we have across our Louisiana position, over 2,000 locations, roughly 20 years of inventory. And the fact that we own 75% of all Tier 1 inventory really puts us in a position of strength and simply not as dependent upon the Western Haynesville. But again, I would just note this creates a great growth option for the company as we head into the back end of the decade.

Our next question or comment comes from the line of John Freeman from Raymond James.

I wanted to follow up, Josh, on some of your comments on the Haynesville where you talked about the success that you all had on the enhanced completions, which you all show in the slide deck. And if maybe you can just sort of elaborate a little bit as I believe those -- the one trade-off is you do have a little bit longer cycle times, which I think pushed some of those Haynesville TILs into next year. But if you can just sort of elaborate on that dynamic.

Yes, sure. We've really put ourselves in a competitive advantage in the Haynesville. For one, just the scale gives us additional opportunities to go out and how we source certain components of the supply chain. As an example, our procurement of sand comes at roughly 1/3 of the cost of where our competitors are. And that's really one of the items that's unlocking this greater well performance. We can simply pump larger, more complex completions, and that's what's ultimately delivering the increased production, but most importantly, improvement in returns and lower breakevens. Specifically, on your point on the cycle times, with the bigger fracs, that leads to large -- longer pump times, longer drillout periods and so the knock-on impact is it does start pushing out some of our TILs. We'll end up with roughly 10 fewer TILs in the year than what we anticipated. There's opportunities to go accelerate those, but the current environment really isn't necessarily needing that incremental gas. So we're happy to allow these turn-in-lines to float into 2027.

Great. And then just my follow-up question, just sticking with the Haynesville. Can you discuss or what's kind of being evaluated with the GenX testing that's underway, what you -- it looks like the initial results are promising, but just remind us kind of what you're testing there.

Yes, sure. One of the things about the Haynesville is you end up producing roughly 70% of the EUR in the first couple of years of production. And so what we're trying to unlock is to create a structural change in how we drain the reservoir and therefore, how those longer-term decline rates show up. We simply want to access more of the reservoir from a common wellbore. And so we are experimenting with some various completion techniques that allows us to enhance that stimulated rock volume with the goal of increasing EURs, which we believe ultimately will lead to better returns in the asset, lower reinvestment rates and lower breakevens. And so we've been pleased with what we've seen to date. It's a little bit too early for us to talk about it. We think there's a real competitive advantage with what we're doing. And so we'll hopefully be in a position to talk about that in the year to come.

Our next question or comment comes from the line of Neil Mehta from Goldman Sachs.

Mike, thanks for the color around the CEO process. Maybe you can unpack that a little bit more for us. It sounds like you said 6 to 9 months, we're 6 months in, it will get done by the next -- by 9 months. At this point, you probably have some visibility, Mike. Maybe you could talk a little bit about characteristics that the Board is looking for? Are you happy with how the process is progressing? And any updates you want to provide to the market?

Sure. Process is progressing well. We're definitely in the back third of this, which is why I'm confident we'll meet our goals. The person that we're looking for is someone who has a long career in energy. We've talked about how it won't be someone from the outside of the industry. Person will have a success on their resume that we hope to capture and bring to our company. They'll have to believe in the integrated gas story model that we've been working on. I mean I don't think that's very controversial in what we're trying to do. And so that person will like that and have an opportunity to make that even better. But look, this company is not made on one person. It's made on the team, and I think we've spent just as much time working on our team. If you think about the last 6 months, of course, we have Marcel here, who's been an amazing addition to the team as the CFO. We've also had Chief Risk Officer. We've had -- now we have a CHRO with us today. And then we've done other stuff that is actually super helpful to the team. This last 6 months, we've rebuilt our business development team in Houston, Texas. Why is that important? You do not have Twin Eagle without building a phenomenal team to work it. And so that is something of the benefits that we talked about, why we're going to move from Oklahoma City. That team has really outkicked the goal in this one. So it's about team first because there's no perfect CEO, but the CEO will have -- they'll definitely have success, and they'll definitely be in energy.

And one of the things I took away from the slide is growing confidence around the Southwest part of the Appalachia business. And just talk about as you think about where you want to be deploying dollars, Haynesville versus the Northeast versus Southwest? Is Southwest continuing to move up the pecking order? And if so, why?

Yes. Credit to the team again for the work that we've been doing in Southwest App. I think it's worth just noting, if you go back to the integration of Chesapeake and Southwestern, really, it was the Haynesville was the focus of that integration. And of course, we delivered a tremendous amount of synergies from that asset. But one of the advantages that we have as a company is that being multi-basin, running large development programs, we will drill roughly 200 wells a year, we have plenty of opportunities to test new tools, equipment, designs and then go export those rapidly across the other business units. And that's exactly what we've seen happen in Southwest Appalachia, just leveraging all the learnings that we've been able to put in place from across the company. Specifically on the capital allocation front, this is the power of our portfolio being across 3 distinct operating basins that each have their own production characteristics and cost characteristics associated with them. One of the great things about Southwest Appalachia, of course, is you have liquid exposure. And so I've talked earlier about the realized inflation associated with higher fuel costs. Well, that's been more than offset by about 3x of increased EBITDA associated with higher liquid costs in the year. And so as we think about capital allocation across the business, we're always going to be tuned into the fundamentals. And as we see movements in mid-cycle price, as we see movements in cost structures, we're in a position to reallocate capital differently to generate the best return on capital for our shareholders.

Our next question or comment comes from the line of Kevin MacCurdy from Pickering Energy Partners.

I wanted to dive into the EBITDA forecast for Twin Eagle a little bit more and how you arrived at that estimate. When you forecast that $200 million a year, is that driven by kind of historical EBITDA, storage and transport spreads? Or is the value really in the origination agreements? And then maybe you could add on what kind of variability you anticipate on that EBITDA number for a good year and a bad year.

Okay. Thanks for the question, Kevin. So the $200 million is what we have seen quite ratably over the last couple of years, and we have used that as the basis, right? It's a ratable business. So we use it as a basis looking forward as well. And a bit earlier, I talked about this is in kind of normal volatility year when there's high volatility events, there's upside to this particular number, about 1.5 to 2x you should think about when there's more volatility. So that's the basis. The business, yes, it starts with origination from the customer contracts back into the infrastructure and then back into supply. But where the real value is driven off is optimizing the logistics of this business. And the Twin Eagle team is really good at that, and that's what drives most of the value in that business. Mike already mentioned that earlier, and we shared that, there's over 1,300 customers within the Twin Eagle book. There are many support agreements, both supply as well as infrastructure that support all of that. And it has been quite repeatable, and the team has proven it by being profitable every single year for the last 15 years, right? And especially that $200 million number has been the underlying base for the last couple of years, and we feel comfortable with that. And then I talked a bit about the kind of the upside or the synergies that we can deliver when we integrate that. And I think on the Twin Eagle, particularly our financial strength as well as our long-term supply allows them to add a customer base that they have so far not been able to kind of touch the longer duration type of agreements that they can do. And then to the Expand portfolio, the Twin Eagle capability, their customer relationships, their access to kind of coast-to-coast and into Canada will really help to unlock value from the 9 Bcf a day or so that we are moving today. So that's the way that this deal -- you should expect the deal to work.

Great. I appreciate that answer. And maybe as a follow-up, I wanted to ask about the production cadence. It looks like 3Q guidance is kind of flattish, but the implied 4Q is higher. So I just wanted to confirm your intentions to kind of ramp into 4Q. And if so, is that really the new run rate? Or is that just maybe a run rate for the winter months?

Yes, Kevin, so we do anticipate at this point in time to have a modest ramp of volume into the fourth quarter. This is showing up primarily across our Appalachia business units, where we would anticipate winter-driven demand to start to tighten basis. And so we think growing production into that demand pool makes a lot of sense for the company. Now I will say that if we start to see demand soften, weather is not showing up, I think we do reserve the right. We've proven over time to be active managers of production. That's both with curtailments through shoulder seasons as well as how we think about our turn-in-line schedule. So we do expect to be up over 7.6 Bcf a day in the fourth quarter, but we give a range for a reason, and that's because we want to maintain flexible with how we deliver volumes and best align those volumes with price. Now as we think about that run rate coming out of the year, right now, again, our business is built around delivering that 7.5 Bcf a day. And you will see us move above and below that, of course, across the course of the year, again, trying to best align our production with price.

Our next question or comment comes from the line of Gabe Daoud from Truist.

Maybe just a quick one for me on Twin Eagle. Maybe a question for Marcel. On the $200 million of EBITDA, maybe more of an accounting question, but how should we think about that showing up in Expand's P&L over time? Is that all just kind of dump into the marketing line? Or would that impact Expand upstream realizations over time?

Yes. We expect it to show up in accounting in 3 different lines, and we'll work out the details and provide some more clarity kind of as we kind of complete the deal and into the next year, right? So the first line, you would see it in realizations. Clearly, it's integrated to our business. The second line is marketing as you do. And then the third line in derivatives, we also expect to see some of that. Kind of we're working now to plan our integration as well as kind of completion of the transaction. And once we get to that point, we'll be able to help you guide into 2027 as well.

Okay. Okay. Great. That's helpful. And then another quick follow-up on Twin Eagle. So you mentioned the magnitude of outperformance during a period of dislocation. So I'd imagine 1Q Twin Eagle probably put up a number significantly higher than what the quarterly run rate would imply. Is that right? Is it that 1.5 to 2x number that you cited?

I think you'll see when we post our financials that they absolutely outperformed this $200 million.

Our next question or comment comes from the line of Betty Jiang from Barclays.

I want to start with a macro question first. It speaks to the Slide 15. I think one of the key investor debate these days is just reconciling this longer-term very structural high growth. But at the same time, there's the near-term bearish gas headwinds. So longer-term, if this demand growth materializes, how do you guys think about ultimately filling that demand? How much do you think will be coming from the Haynesville versus Appalachia, which now seemingly will be a growth driver as well and associated gas? And then in the near-term, given where gas prices here, do you think we could see some slowdown in the Haynesville, whether that's coming from Expand or other Haynesville more broadly until there is a stronger gas price signal?

Yes. Betty, this is Josh. So I think in the near-term, specifically in the Haynesville, I think there's an expectation that you do see some additional production growth in the back half of the year. There's probably 0.5 B to 1 B a day of additional growth. But I think I would just note that, that's really dependent upon the actions of one operator in the basin. Clearly, the market sits in a modestly oversupplied position right now. You're also faced with additional Permian egress that's coming on to the tune of 3.5-or-so Bcf a day of additional egress by year-end. And so that will keep the markets, I would say, in an oversupply position through at least probably the first half of '27. I think as we get into the second half, we do anticipate some structural tightening in the markets where we would anticipate 5.5 to 6 Bcf a day of new demand showing up. And so as we think about that demand, not just through '27, but again, I think you have to think a little bit longer term than that, looking at 19 to 24 Bcf a day of incremental demand by the end of the decade. Our business is built to be able to grow into that demand. Specifically, we think about the Haynesville with our deep inventory, the access to infrastructure, now the business being further enhanced combining with Twin Eagle, we are very well positioned to meet the needs of customers heading into the end of the decade.

That's helpful. And actually that ties into my Twin Eagle follow-up. So some Northeast producers do talk about growing into contracted demand. That's historically not the same stance for Expand. With Twin Eagle's marketing capabilities, do you think there's more appetite if these contract opportunities materialize that you will tie your volume growth with that?

Well, absolutely. We -- one of our fundamental principles is we want to facilitate new demand so that we can grow into it. I mean the value of Twin Eagle is if they can help us identify and put that demand together, then we'll grow into it.

Our next question or comment comes from the line of Phillip Jungwirth from BMO.

Curious what the dynamic is across Twin Eagle's producer network and purchase agreements at the wellhead. And this part of the strategy evolve at all given the combination with Expand? And separately, just how has customer feedback been so far to the deal? And when you hear from them, what are they most excited about around the combination?

When we talk to Twin Eagle guys, they think of this as a 3-legged stool. They have the customers, they have credit and they have supply. We're taking care of both credit and supply. So they're sort of giddy on that because customers always drive transactions and customers want to have surety of supply and they want to know people are in business for long term. And so that is -- makes them and their group super excited. Other things that they're excited about is term. When you don't have -- they have a pretty short-term credit facility. By having a long-term, they're starting to get excited about how do I extend term, what type of customers and size. So absolutely, team is ready to go.

Okay. Great. And then the marketing and commercial strategy started around $500 million, $0.20 an Mcf. With Twin, we've raised that to $750 million or $0.30. Is there any reason you wouldn't look to keep pushing this higher even if it requires additional inorganic investment?

Yes. No, we'll continue to push that higher and look for opportunities, right? So the way that we have now structured that our original $500 million, about half of that we were expecting to come from new demand, so primarily LNG and the rest of our kind of premium demand markets as well as volatility management. Clearly, with the Twin Eagle acquisition, we kept some of that. We delivered synergies and accelerate what we had identified, but we think we can do now quicker. And then we still have our LNG that comes on top of it, that's the $750 million. And as Mike started kind of saying, if we want to -- we are the leading integrated gas company. And so we continue to push into that customer and see where we can identify more value on that side. And we'll prefer to do that capital-light as we have already said.

Our next question or comment comes from the line of Michael Scialla from Stephens.

Your leasing, you mentioned came in higher than expected. I just want to see what the opportunity set looks like there going forward. And if you maintain the pace of leasing activity that you had in the first half, is it fair to assume that you might be pushing towards the high end of your CapEx guidance for the year?

Yes. Mike, yes, Q2 was definitely, I think, a highlight for us. I think we've been working very, very hard to bring forward some interesting opportunities for the company. Case in point, the 3,000 acres that we acquired in the core of Bradford County, that's something we've been working for well over 2 years to bring to fruition. So we have a very capable and active land organization working in concert with the subsurface teams to turn up new opportunities. And so we do remain heavily focused on identifying new opportunities. They're simply hard to predict. And so we do anticipate across the second half of the year that spending will wind down a little bit. But if there's good opportunities, the company is well positioned financially to go action these accretive transactions.

Got you. And Mike, last quarter, you said on the marketing side, you thought you could stack a lot of singles and doubles together, and you didn't really need to do a large deal. But -- you did one, obviously, with Twin Eagle here. How do those opportunities change now? Are they still part of the plan? Or do those go away with the Twin Eagle deal?

No, we're still chasing those transactions. We'll end up stacking those singles and doubles, and that will continue. We'll just have a bigger footprint to put them across. And so you'll see us have plenty of activity in both sort of our original strategy as well as Twin Eagle strategy.

Our next question or comment comes from the line of John Annis from Texas Capital.

For my first one, with pro forma storage increasing to 49 Bcf, how much of that capacity is currently committed to existing customer arrangements versus available for optimization? And is the opportunity more about seasonal spreads, physical reliability or creating structured products for customers?

Well, sure. So we're not prepared to disclose exactly the customer relationships we have in storage. We think about it more holistically and we back up. We like to think about margin across the value chain, particularly around seasonal opportunities. Of course, they add gas in low-price environments and in the winter, they take it out. So you should just think about like this cycle.

Makes sense. And then maybe taking a step back, does the expanded marketing and storage platform increase the value of maintaining spare productive capacity in the upstream business? I guess, in other words, does the integrated platform make you more willing to build productive capacity, curtail or grow production depending on market signals than you were on a stand-alone basis?

Yes. John, we actually love that concept. Of course, we've been proponents of actively managing production. And I think as we get closer to customers, have better insights on supply and demand trends, that just puts us in a stronger position to actively manage production, both up and down.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes our Q&A session. At this time, I would like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Mike Wichterich for any closing remarks.

Thank you, everyone, for joining the call. We're excited about this transaction, and we're excited about our team that we're building here. We expect to have a big quarter next quarter. So please stay tuned. Thank you for your time.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today's conference. This concludes the program. You may now disconnect. Everyone, have a wonderful day.