Cheniere Energy Inc.

Overview Key strengths Key risks Strong contractual profile, with approximately 95% of capacity locked in under long-term offtake agreements with creditworthy counterparties. Bullet maturity bonds represent about 80% of Cheniere Energy Inc. ?s (CEI) consolidated capital structure. Although we anticipate project-level bullet debt will be migrated to the corporate level or replaced with project-level amortizing debt, the current capital structure exposes the project to some refinancing risk and capital market conditions. Commercially proven design and technology as the largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) production and export company in the U.S. Limited geographic diversity due to reliance on only two assets in the same region. Comprehensive program to obtain natural gas feed stocks and related transportation to comfortably support production commitments

...CEI's projected credit metrics continue to support the `###' rating. S&P Global Ratings projects S&P Global Ratings-adjusted EBITDA of about $6.2 billion-$6.7 billion in 2025 and 2026, normalized from record levels generated in 2022 and 2023 of about $11.6 billion and $8.8 billion, respectively. S&P Global Ratings-adjusted EBITDA in 2024 was about $7.0 billion, driven by lower natural gas prices and short-term agreement revenues compared with 2023. We anticipate that the company will maintain the same capital allocation priorities, such that leverage will remain at about 3.9 at CEI in 2025, projected to decrease to about 3.4x in 2026 once the company benefits from the fully operational CCH stage 3. We view these metrics as consistent with our issuer credit rating (ICR) of `###' on CEI. The company's cash flow conversion is high, which results in material cash flows available for capital allocation priorities including expansion projects, and share repurchases combined with debt paydown....

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