Welcome to the Golar LNG Limited Q4 2022 Results Presentation. After the slide presentation by CEO, Karl Fredrik Staubo; and CFO, Eduardo Maranhão, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] At this time all participants are in listen-only mode. I will now pass you over to Karl Fredrik Staubo. Karl, please go ahead.

Thank you operator. And welcome to Golar LNGs Q4 earnings result presentation. My name is Karl Fredrik Staubo, CEO of Golar LNG. I’m accompanied today by our CFO, Mr. Eduardo Maranhão to present this quarter’s result. Before we get into the presentation, please note the forward-looking statements on Slide 2. Turning to Slide 3, this morning we sold our remaining shareholding in CoolCo Limited for net proceeds about $56 million. Since our last earnings call, we have also exited our shareholding in [Indiscernible] and both backed their stake in our FLNG Hilli. Our only current shareholding is Avenir LNG with a book value of around $42 million. Our core business is owning our 2 FLNGs Hilli operating for Perenco in Cameroon. Hilli generates significant operating cash flows due to its commodity link tariff. The unit is coming off a recontacting in July 2026 and we’re very optimistic to increase utilization and improve commercial terms for the unit upon recontracting. Gimi is expected to target 20-year contract for BP on the Tortue field outside Mauritania and Senegal later this year. We will then start to engage cash flow on the more than $1.2 million invested in the project today. We are also actively pursuing ordering of a Mark II FLNG with an annual liquefaction capacity of 3.5 million tonnes per annum. I will get back to that later in the presentation. Turning to Slide 4 and the Q4 highlights. Golar reports a 2022 net income of $788 million and a record book value of $2.9 million equivalent to about $27 a share. Our cash position stands at approximately $1 billion or $9.3 a share. In total, we have monetized $572 million in cash during Q4 2022 and Q1 year-to-date be exiting new [Indiscernible] and CoolCo. We also used our remaning 4.1…

Thank you, Eduardo. Turning to slide 12 and FLNG Gimi construction update. Gimi is now 92% complete and on track for sail-away during first half of 2023. All heavy lifts are onboard and commissioning are underway. We currently have an average daily workforce of 4300 workers with 24/7 activities and more than 30 million man hours worked to date. We expect the unit to sail-away towards the end of Q2 and arrive on site ready for start-up during Q3. Turning to slide 13, we have now secured a vessel for Mark II conversion. The vessel is a Japanese built 2004 Vintage Moss-type designed carrier with a storage capacity of 148,000. We have agreed to pay $5 million in a reservation fee that will be deducted from the total acquisition price of $77.5 million once the acquisition option is declared. We continue to order long lead equipment and are currently committed $320 million of long lead items and have more than 200 engineers between the shipyard topside provider and Golar actively working on the project. We’ve made significant progress during the quarter with the conversion shipyard and confirmed delivery within 2025 based on the current schedule. We believe that securing an attractive delivery for this unit increases our ability to drive value with prospective FLNG clients. We have also been to China and received strong interest from lending banks for construction and long-term financing for Mark II units. We’re actively working on several tarping [ph] opportunities for the project including an attractive integrated opportunity together with an upstream partner. Turning to slide 14, following the acquisition of NFE stake in Hilli, Golar now controls a total liquefaction capacity of about 4.1 million pounds per annum. With no net debt our market cap and enterprise value is currently essentially the same number,…

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] our first question comes from the line of Ben Nolan from Stifel. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Thank you. Good morning, Karl and Eduardo, afternoon guys. I’d say how am I going to do my two questions, we’ll start with the potential for a return of capital to shareholders, either through dividends or share repurchases. As I recall, there was some covenant issues that prevented you guys from being able to do that as part of your credit facilities. Could you maybe talk through what those are if they’ve been resolved if there is anything in the way of potentially that direction for capital allocation?

Hi Ben. So the only restriction we currently have is under the unsecured bonds, where we are currently not allowed to start a dividend until March, April 2024. At which point we can start. So the question is, if it's anyways, we could make that earlier.

Right. And I suppose the answer is you’re working on it is that – that’s the read through there?

Yes.

Okay. All right. I suppose we’ll stay tuned. For my next question, I’m curious, there was some updates about the potential expansion of the Tortue field, where the Gimi is going. It looks as though that project is going a to a different design, just curious where you guys stand on that. And if it is not sort of replicating the, your design, your FLNG design, what, how you approach that particular opportunity?

There’s a first and foremost be involved. We’re obviously involved in the project through phase one and the startup of Gimi. We obviously know that BP and Kosmos was out yesterday with a pre field study for a potential gravity based solution. And we note that this is a pre field study that would take some time to develop. It will be a less proven technology for the area. We also note that they were considering to use electrical drive liquefaction technology, which would be a mobile application in a region without abundant renewable energy sourcing. So you could source the electricity from land, but inland is still fueled by gas or oil. So we don’t really see the benefit of doing that shore based. At the end of the day, it’s up to the charters to decide what direction they want to take. But we, as we’ve tried to highlight a few times during this call would rather focus our efforts on integrated project, as opposed to expanding further fixed tolling based contracts for majors, especially in the recessionary environment, because it’s less interesting to spend very big CapEx in the next three years on construction, only to be repaired on a fixed tariffs for 20 years thereafter.

Okay. All right. Well, I have more but I’ll respect the two limit. And if there’s time at the end, I’ll jump back, and I appreciate it. Thank you.

Thanks Nolan.

Thank you. We’ll now move on to our next question. Please stand by. Our next question comes from the line of Amit Mehrotra from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Hi, this is Chris Robertson on for Amit. Thanks for taking our questions.

Hi, Chris.

Hi, just to kind of piggyback off of a Ben’s questions regarding the dividend versus share repurchase. I mean, you kind of laid out a scenario for a much higher share price earlier in the presentation. Do you think is the current thinking maybe around share repurchases, given where the shares trade at today? And then with regards to a dividend, I know it’s pretty early to maybe think about this, given that you’re having some on-going discussions there. But can you talk about a policy? You’re thinking about, is that going in the direction of a steady state dividend policy? Or how should we think about that?

Well Chris, you broke up a bit, but I think I captured most of what you referred to. So a repurchase and a dividend would follow the same restriction in the current unsecured bonds. So in the event that we’re to engage, we wouldn’t currently able to do until March April of 24th. When it comes to the balance between dividend and repurchase, this is still under exploration between the board and management and all firm decisions have been made either way, but we’re working at alternatives to identify. I think if you’d highlight we believe that both compared to book value of equity, cash flow multiples, and dollar per tonne, comparisons to recent transactions, we see significant value in the stocks [ph] today.

Got it. And then we can you talk about the potential for future projects as it relates to kind of holding some cash back on the balance sheet going forward to present -- not just the mark, that you’ve kind of laid out here, but further projects. Eduardo Maranhão: I think as Eduardo it is, the free cash flow to equity, just from operations, from Hilli and Gimi would be sufficient to pay or just start returning very healthy amounts of cash flow to shareholders. And you can do all of that, even without touching a million dollars of cash. And the billion dollars of cash is more than sufficient to fund a mark to growth project. So we have plenty of capacity to both grow and return cash flow to equity, and they’re not mutually exclusive.

Yes, got it. Yes, it’s certainly a lot of liquidity here. All right. Thank you for taking the questions. Eduardo Maranhão: Thanks, Chris.

Thank you. We’ll now move on to our next question. Please standby. Our next question comes from the line of Chris Tsung from Webber Research. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Hey, good afternoon, Karl and Eduardo how are you?

Oh, good. Yes.

Thank you. Just looking at your presentation, it looks like the cost for Mark II increased around 77% like, I think you guys said 300 million last quarter. So just wanted to ask is that higher price from like a higher cost environment or is it just ordering more equipment and just lumping in, a second part of this is, does that change your guidance on what the dollar per ton costs for FLNG?

I assume you’re referring to slide 15. And the balance of what we use for illustrative purposes, which slide 15 is meant to be, is that we use the dollar per tonne that you derive out on slide 14. So we just set up you buy Golar today at 590. You use 590 at the same basis. What would that equate to? An implied liquefaction earnings or cost versus EBITDA. We do believe that we can create the Mark II somewhat cheaper than that.

Okay, yes, cause I think in the prior earnings. You guys got it to around like 500 to 600 at a tonne.

Maintained that planning.

Okay, you maintained that?

Yes.

Okay, great. Thanks. And my second question, I think you’ve touched on this before as well, just how much liquidity could you unlock if you refinance Gimi and Hilli?

Eduardo, you want to tackle that one? Eduardo Maranhão: Yes, sure. So I think we discussed that on the previous call. We have assessed a different number of alternatives to potentially extract further value from Hilli and Gimi. Depending on which one we would pursue, we could see the potential to unlock just on Gimi alone values of in excess of $1.2 billion to $1.3 billion. That would require a further refinancing of the existing facility. And we could be doing that either in the capital markets or pursuing a new commercial bank facility. We still believe that we would be better off eliminating completely the construction risk. So we don’t expect to take any sort of refinancing activities before the commencement of operations of Gimi. I think, with the current cash position that we have, and as discussed and pointed out by Karl as well, further enhanced by the cash flow generation from Hilli, we have more than enough to sustain both further growth on FLNG, but also to commence payments in the near future. So I think we will try to be optimistic when it comes to refinancing.

Great, that’s it for me. Thank you guys. Thank you. Eduardo Maranhão: Thank you.

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Liam Burke from B. Riley Financial. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Thank you. Hi, Karl, how are you?

Good.

Karl, are you seeing any competing FLNG players in the market looking for potential projects that you would think would be more in line with Golar?

I think the biggest competitor as such as major stuff control fields, building the assets for own balance sheets, or like what VPN Kosmos is planning on the expansion of Tortue.

Okay, but you don’t see any players like NFE stepping in and competing for that for your business.

As we’ve said on numerous occasions when it comes to NFE we think that the first [ph] LNG technology that they are pursuing is complementary to that Golar. They are mainly targeting smaller resources in shallower waters and seem to focus mainly on U.S. Gulf of Mexico. And we think that’s complementary to those projects that we are pursuing and we like their technology and think that they have, again, complementary technology to ours and don’t see them as a direct competitors for any of the projects we are currently developing.

Okay, great. Thanks Karl.

Thank you.

Thank you. We’ll now move on to our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Ben Nolan from Stifel. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Hi, I told you I’d be back. I wanted to just cover a little bit more on the Mark II. In the presentation, you said that you’re confirmed, you have a shipyard slot confirmed for 2025 delivery. I’m curious when you would need to have the vessel in the yard in the first place or when you would actually start spinning other than for the acquisition of the ship and log me tonight is the actual construction of that. And could you remind us what you’re thinking in terms of what the total CapEx cost for Mark II would be?

Sure. So, okay, Mark II is slightly different in sort of concepts than that of Mark I. So if you go for example, on slide 13, you can see that the liquefaction plant itself is planned to be built from scratch on a new ships midsection. Then you bring the ship in, you basically chopped the ship in the middle and you weld on the ship to either side of the liquefaction plant. Hence, to keep that schedule, we will start to construct the mid-section where the vast majority of the [Indiscernible] is intended for. And then we would need the ship to be in the shipyards to start preparation work on the ship itself this time next year. So for us, it’s more important to get going on the midsection than to get shipped into the shipyard, this side or during this year. So that’s how this unit is built, which means that it’s less stick building into an existing unit. You basically put the liquefaction plant in the middle and then add the storage. In terms of CapEx, it’s slightly dependent on what mooring system that we will end up using, because we believe around somewhere between 1.8 and on 2 billions should be feasible.

Okay, perfect. That is good color. And I suppose that in the interim period, after you take delivery of the ship, and before it goes in the shipyard you would just trade it in the spot market or something. Is that a fair assumption?

No, I think the way we’ve tried to structure the whole Mark II project is that we commit and secure the timeframes, but we try to limit the cash drag until we actually need the equipment. So when it comes to the ship itself, that’s why also why we structured it as an option, where we pay 5 million to reserve the ship, we then need to pay somewhat more money but not the full amount upon the duration of the option. And then the final installment is paid upon delivery, which is likely to be around this time next year in Q1.

Okay. All right. Very clear. Appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you, Ben.

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. So I’ll hand the call back to Karl for closing remarks.

Thank you all for listening into our quarterly presentation. We’re very excited about the development of the project during 2022 and both hope and plan to keep the same pace of progress during 2023. And thank you for your continued interest and support in the company. We wish you all a good day and bye bye.

This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.