| Account | Shares | Price | Value | % of acct | Cost/sh | Gain $ | Gain % | Target |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 401K | 255 | $98.90 | $25,220 | 1.03% | $92.59 | $1,609 | +6.8% | — |
In short: New long — bought a 20bp starter on Friday and will keep adding through March (the transcript garbles the ticker as "EXC"; the title, report and model say EXE). "One of the most compelling larger cap natural gas longs… it could be a good time over the next six months to accumulate something like EXE because… Europe is a strategic disadvantage and LNG exports have been growing in the US by 10 to 15% every year." The balance sheet: "a 20 billion market cap, but has very little debt… it used to have over 10 billion of debt… before 2019. Today… 3.6 billion of debt, 600 of cash." The numbers: "13.6 billion of sales… 6.7 billion of EBITDA, 2 billion of net income, basically $9 a share… less than 10 times earnings… two and a half billion of free cash flow going to 3 billion… It trades at a 15% free cash flow yield to equity on 2026." The model (full version in the SSR Q&A tab): "even in our bear case, the price would be about 80… around 10% downside. Our bull case is around 152… 70% upside… the mid-case being around 50%… basically like up seven down one in a two-year time frame," with a $129 base target (47% from $88) on "$70 of oil in 2028, 2029," Henry Hub $3.53 (2026) / $3.34 (2027) → $3.75, and "a mid-five times multiple, EV to EBITDAX." Assets across the Marcellus, Utica and Haynesville: "a very diversified natural gas company with a very low-cost base." "We added 20 basis points here on Friday, which is a very big starter position, and we'll continue to add to it through March."
Expand Energy is the company formerly known as Chesapeake Energy, now one of the largest natural gas producers in the world, with wells in the Marcellus and Utica shales of Appalachia and the Haynesville shale near the Gulf Coast export terminals. Ten years ago it was drowning in debt; today it owes about $3 billion net, against a stock market value of about $20 billion.
US natural gas is cheap right now and the shares are at their lowest of the year, partly because people fear a warm winter. Singh looks past that. He expects demand to keep rising for two reasons: the US ships more gas abroad as liquefied natural gas every year (10-15% growth), and Europe has lost both Russian pipeline gas and, with the Gulf blockade, Qatari cargoes; and data centres for artificial intelligence need gas-fired power.
The core of the case is cash. The company is expected to generate about $3 billion of free cash — money left after running and maintaining the business — which is about 15% of its market value each year. His team's model says the shares are worth about $129 in two years (47% more than today), $152 if gas prices are firmer, and about $80 if they stay weak — roughly seven dollars of possible gain for each dollar of possible loss. He bought a starter position and plans to keep buying through March, using the cheap-gas season to build it.
Full passage: premium transcript (PDF).
In short: Named as one of "the largest U.S. natural gas producers, like Expand Energy, Range Resources, and EOG," whose "market performance" has been "obviously inhibited" by the apathy the post exists to argue against — bullishness "close to the lowest it's been this decade, outside of Covid" and a real gas price in the "18th percentile going all the way back to 2010," against a fuel supplying 43% of U.S. electricity generation, "nearly double all renewables combined," into data-center load that "can't operate in accordance with daylight hours and wind patterns." The stance is therefore the suppression is sentiment, not substance — consistent with the standing "dirt cheap" Buy-list posture on EXE carried since Jun-11 and the May-29 POW! pure-play case. Two qualifiers to read honestly: no fresh rating, price, target or portfolio action is attached here, and the specific Permian takeaway kicker is not EXE's — Expand is a Haynesville/Appalachian producer, so it benefits from the demand and sentiment legs of the argument rather than from the basis relief that makes EOG the named beneficiary. If anything, 15 Bcf/d of newly-liberated Permian associated gas reaching market is incremental supply competing with Appalachian molecules — a tension the post does not address.
Expand Energy is the largest pure natural-gas producer in the United States, concentrated in the Haynesville shale of Louisiana/east Texas and in Appalachia. Unlike EOG it doesn't produce gas as a by-product of drilling for oil — gas is the business, so its fortunes track the gas price and how investors feel about gas almost one-for-one.
Hay names it here as an injured party rather than as a fresh recommendation. His point is that the shares of "the largest U.S. natural gas producers, like Expand Energy, Range Resources, and EOG" have been held back by how investors feel about the commodity, not by anything the companies have done wrong. And the way investors feel is close to the most negative it has been in a decade outside the Covid crash, while the inflation-adjusted price of gas sits in the bottom fifth of its range since 2010 — even though gas supplies 43% of American electricity and the data-centre boom needs power that runs around the clock.
So the stance is the contrarian one he has held on gas all year: the pessimism is about sentiment, the asset is fine. Two honest caveats, though. He attaches no new rating, price or target to Expand in this piece. And the specific catalyst he identifies — new Permian pipelines unlocking stranded gas — is not Expand's catalyst, because Expand doesn't produce in the Permian. If anything, that freed-up gas eventually competes with Expand's own molecules for the same customers, a tension the piece doesn't take up.
In short: "Far and away the biggest winner" — controls ~70% of remaining core Haynesville wells, some of the highest-quality rock in the country; CEO-less after a search, stock down ~6 months, trading ~4× EBITDA / low-to-mid-teens FCF yield on a forward curve "where no one believes" his higher-gas case.
Expand Energy is the largest US natural-gas producer, sitting on roughly 70% of the best remaining wells in the Haynesville — a top-tier gas field. Smith calls it "far and away the biggest winner" of the coming gas shortage.
The setup: the company has no CEO right now (a leadership search dragged the stock down over six months), and it trades at only about 4× its cash earnings (EBITDA) and a low-to-mid-teens free-cash-flow yield — cheap. Crucially, the market prices in today's low gas price staying flat for years. Smith's whole argument is that gas is heading much higher, so a great asset is on sale precisely because "no one believes" that. The wells haven't changed; only the sentiment has.
25:27Expand Energy is probably at the top of that list. They probably control 70% of remaining core Haynesville wells of the very closely known parameters of rock where we know it to be very productive and so Expand we think is far and away the biggest winner. Uniquely Expand is CEO-less right now, there was some turnover in the year, they're going through a search, the stock has plummeted over the last six months as a part of that search and it's trading at four times EBITDA on a forward curve where no one believes what I'm telling
In short: Cheap gas producer (~10× earnings, ~1.5× sales) that broke out and pulled back — "you're not overpaying."
Expand Energy is a US natural-gas producer — a way to own the gas thesis through a company rather than the commodity. Hay likes that it's cheap: about 10× its annual earnings and 1.5× its sales, which for a producer is inexpensive. The stock already broke higher and then pulled back, which he sees as a better entry.
His one-liner: "you're not overpaying," unlike so many other stocks today. If gas re-rates toward global prices, a low-cost producer like this has a lot of room to run.
22:15I do have a specific idea here. I guess I could stop for a second and just talk about, you know, if you got your viewers want to buy natural gas producers, if they're interested, they should do their own research, of course. But, — yeah, — we XE expand energy a lot. It's broken out, but pulled back. It's only trading for about uh 10 times earnings, one and a half times sales.
In short: Pick of the Week + Buy-list add. Largest independent US gas producer (~$93–95, ~$22.5B cap, –24% from high). Q1: revenue $4.39B (+24%, beat), FCF $1.7B, gross debt cut $1.3B (full-year target in one quarter). Forward P/E ~10, 2026 EV/EBITDA ~4.2x, ~15% FCF yield, 76.5% gross margin. Delfin 20-yr LNG SPA (Apr 22). Demand: AI-power + LNG export; US gas an 85–90% discount to global. Consensus Buy, PT $130–132. "We will add them to the main list next week."
Expand Energy is America's biggest independent natural-gas driller (it's what you get when Chesapeake and Southwestern merged in late 2024). The stock has fallen about 24% from its high, and at ~$93–95 it's strikingly cheap — roughly 10x earnings and about 4.2x a common cash-flow yardstick (EV/EBITDA), throwing off a ~15% free-cash-flow yield. Cheap usually means the market expects the business to wither. Hay's argument is the opposite is coming.
Two things the market is underweighting. First, the company is paying down debt at a startling clip — it cut $1.3B of gross debt in a single quarter, hitting what was supposed to be a full-year goal in three months, so the balance sheet is getting safer fast. Second, two new sources of demand for US gas are arriving at once: AI data centers need power that's on 24/7 (gas, not intermittent wind/solar), and the US is building export terminals to ship gas overseas as LNG — capacity roughly doubling by 2030. Expand just signed a 20-year deal to supply one of those export projects (Delfin).
The kicker is price. US gas sells for a fraction of what the rest of the world pays — an 85–90% discount, per the energy research shop Goehring & Rozencwajg. Hay thinks that gap is too big to last: as exports and data centers soak up US gas, the US price should rise toward the world price, and a cheap producer like Expand re-rates higher. Wall Street already rates it a Buy with a $130–132 target (~one-third upside), and even that only takes the valuation to ~5.5x cash flow — still below what acquirers pay for whole companies. The main risks: if US gas falls below ~$2.50 the cash flow shrinks, the export project could slip, and the CEO seat is currently filled on an interim basis.
In short: The other top large-cap pure-play gas name — produces more gas in the US than anybody (more than Exxon/Chevron); the cleanest way to be long rising gas prices.
Expand Energy produces more natural gas in the US than anyone — more than even Exxon or Chevron. It does one thing, and that's drill and sell gas, which makes it the cleanest, most direct way to bet on natural gas prices going up as AI-driven power demand climbs.
It's the other of his two favorite large gas-only names. Same logic as EQT: a focused producer that benefits straightforwardly from higher gas prices, now run with the spending discipline the industry lacked for years.
35:32— So in your coverage of the E&Ps, who benefits the most here? Give me one that's dominantly gas, as pure play as possible. And so within that large cap space, you end up with two that kind of rise to the top, EQT and EXE are the tickers. So EQT Energy and EXE, EXPAN Energy. They're both drillers and producers. EXPAN Energy produces more gas in the US than anybody, more than Exxon, Chevron and the like. And EQT is one notch, two notches behind. So these are dedicated dry gas.
In short: Recap of the same September-2024 bullish write-up (with CTRA and AR); also "performed considerably better" than CTRA since. A gas-producer winner reinforcing the natural-gas case behind the DVN pick.
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Verbatim excerpts from the public transcripts (auto-pulled at each mention's timestamp, lightly cleaned). Timestamps link into the video; "source page" opens that commentator's full analysis at this row. Click a mention's header line to expand it (one open at a time). For personal study — not investment advice.