On Friday, TC Energy (TSX:TRP) discussed first-quarter financial results during its earnings call. The full transcript is provided below.
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The full earnings call is available at https://www.gowebcasting.com/events/tc-energy-corporation/2026/05/01/2026-first-quarter-financial-results/play
Summary
TC Energy Corp reported a 14% year-over-year increase in comparable EBITDA, reaching over $3 billion, marking its best safety performance in six years.
The company announced a $1.5 billion investment in the Appalachia Supply Project on its Columbia Gas system, supported by a 20-year take-or-pay contract, expected to be in service by 2030.
TC Energy Corp reaffirmed its 2026 and 2028 EBITDA outlook, with a target of $11.6 to $11.8 billion for 2026 and $12.6 to $13.1 billion for 2028, supported by a robust project development pipeline.
In Canada, the company reached new commercial agreements for Coastal GasLink Phase 2 and is exploring a new investment framework for NGTL expansions.
The US Heartland region represents a significant growth opportunity, with natural gas demand expected to grow 40% through 2035, driven by power generation and data center expansion.
Full Transcript
OPERATOR
Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the TC Energy first quarter 2026 results conference call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen only mode and the conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To join the question queue, you may press star, then one on your telephone keypad. Should you need assistance during the conference call, you may reach an operator by pressing STAR and then zero. I would now like to turn the conference over to Gavin Miley, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Gavin Miley (Vice President, Investor Relations)
Thank you. I’d like to welcome you to TC Energy’s first quarter 2026 conference call. Joining me are Francois Poirier, President and Chief Executive Officer, Sean o’, Donnell, Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, along with other members of our senior leadership team. Sean will begin today with some comments on our financial results and operational highlights. A copy of the slide presentation is available on our website under the Investors section. Following the remarks, we’ll take questions from the investment community. We ask that you please limit yourself to two questions and if you are a member of the media, please contact our media team. Today’s remarks will include forward looking statements that are subject to important risks and uncertainties. For more information, please see reports filed by TC Energy, with Canadian securities regulators and with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Finally, we’ll refer to certain non GAAP measures that may not be comparable to similar measures presented by other entities. A reconciliation is contained in the appendix of this presentation. With that, I’ll now turn the call to Francois.
Francois Poirier (President and Chief Executive Officer)
Thanks Gavin and good morning everybody. We entered 2026 with strong momentum, delivering against a clear and consistent set of strategic priorities. First and foremost, we had our best safety performance in six years. We generated over $3 billion of comparable EBITDA up 14% year over year, demonstrating strong stable results amid ongoing market and geopolitical volatility. We reached settlement agreements with customers on our Canadian Mainline, ANR and Great Lakes assets with outcomes largely in line with expectations, further supporting our comparable EBITDA outlook. Today I’m pleased to announce a strategic investment on our Columbia gas system, the US $1.5 billion Appalachia supply project, which extends our reach into a high demand corridor and creates a scalable platform for future growth. Customer demand continues to validate our strategy with consecutive open seasons in Ohio and on our Crossroads system seeing strong response supporting incremental growth visibility. In Canada, we reached an important milestone with new commercial agreements for Coastal GasLink Phase 2 under a disciplined risk allocation framework while execution of the Bruce Power MCR program remains firmly on track. These outcomes reinforce our confidence in delivering on our 2026 comparable EBITDA outlook, maintaining disciplined capital spending and preserving balance sheet strength as we continue to deliver solid growth, low risk and repeatable performance. The US Heartland is one of the most strategically important regions in our portfolio and one where we have a clear competitive advantage. With over 27,000 miles of pipeline infrastructure, we operate more natural gas pipeline and storage in the region than any other company, offering unmatched access to low cost supply and key demand markets. Today, the heartland represents approximately 3/4 of our US deliveries with natural gas demand expected to grow an additional 40% through 2035. Driven by diversified demand from power generation including data centers, LDCs and LNG exports. Our ANR system sits at the core of our Heartland footprint and exemplifies the strength of our incumbent position in the US Midwest. Including our Heartland and Northwoods projects. We’ve announced nearly $3 billion of investment on ANR over the last six years, adding more than 1.1 bcf per day of incremental capacity by leveraging existing rights of way and infrastructure on our Columbia Gas system. Natural gas demand across the footprint has increased by approximately 50% and we expect an additional 4 BCF a day of incremental demand by 2035. We expect this momentum to continue to unlock additional accretive growth opportunities to further reinforced by the strategic investment being made today in our Appalachia Supply project. This project further extends our reach into this high value high growth market. The US $1.5 billion expansion project on our Columbia Gas system is supported by a long term 20 year take or pay contract backed by an investment grade utility and is expected to deliver solid risk adjusted returns and a 7.3 times build multiple. The project will add 0.8 BCF per day of capacity to support new power generation development with an anticipated in service date of 2030. But importantly, the project will be capable of up to 2bcf a day of total capacity through future expansions creating line of sight for capital efficient growth projects relating to overall economic development demand from data centers and as broader electrification continues to scale. This strategic investment reinforces the strength of the Columbia Gas system while positioning us for several potential follow on accretive opportunities. Accelerating power related load growth is driving customer demand across our footprint and it’s reflected in the results of our two most recent open seasons. As we noted in our previous quarter earnings call, the Columbus, Ohio open season was approximately three times oversubscribed. This strong response reflects Ohio’s projected natural gas demand growth of more than 30% over the next decade, the largest increase nationally outside of LNG exporting states. Growth is being driven by power generation, industrial expansion and grid reliability needs, including significant incremental load from more than 40 new data centers, positioning Ohio as a top five US data center market. Our Crossroads open season received a similarly strong response with bids exceeding two and a half times the capacity offering. What’s important is not just the level of demand we’re seeing, but how we’re well positioned to capture it. We are intentionally strengthening connections across our systems, linking assets with access to premium low cost supply such as Columbia Gas to systems serving high quality long duration demand such as A and R in corridor expansion. Opportunities on established systems like Crossroads allow us to respond quickly to customer needs, deploy capital efficiently and meaningfully, reduce execution risk Turning to Bruce Power, the MCR program continues to execute safely, reliably and with improving economics. We’ve seen successive MCR costs come down by applying lessons learned and using new tools like robotics for removal and installation activities. That execution excellence underpins the long term visibility of cash flows from the asset. By 2030 distributions will begin to meaningfully exceed capital spend and by 2032 Bruce is expected to generate approximately $1 billion of annual free cash flow, increasing to approximately $2 billion once the MCR program is complete in 2035. Strong execution reinforces confidence in the team’s ability to deliver significant free cash flow growth from Bruce Power. That creates further optionality supporting growth across our entire portfolio as well as the potential expansion of of Bruce C and
Sean
with that I’ll turn it over to Sean to walk through the numbers. Thanks Francois Good morning, everybody. Turning to our first quarter performance, TC delivered 14% year over year growth in comparable EBITDA, marking a very strong start to 2026 from each of our four business units. Both our Canadian and US natural gas pipeline businesses continued to perform exceptionally well, setting seven new all time delivery records during the quarter. The results underscore the strength of our footprint and the value that our highly contracted in corridor assets provide to our customers. In the power and energy solutions business, Bruce Power achieved 88% availability in the quarter, which is in line with our plan and which also includes the planned outage on unit 8 for full year 26. We continue to expect Bruce’s availability to be in the low 90% range which is consistent with 2025. Our Alberta cogeneration fleet also delivered exceptional performance, achieving 99.5% availability. On the right hand side of the page we summarize our quarterly EBITDA performance.
Sean
I would highlight that this was a record quarter, marking the first time that we generated more than $3 billion of comparable EBITDA from continuing operations in a single quarter. Growth was led by our Mexico and U.S. natural gas businesses who placed over $8 billion of new assets into service in 2025. Canadian natural gas pipelines benefited from higher flow through depreciation and NGTL incentive earnings, while Power and Energy Solutions SAw higher contributions from Bruce Power.
Sean
These results reflect strong execution across each of our lines of business and reinforce the momentum that underpins our financial outlook for the portfolio this year. Looking ahead, we’re reaffirming both our 2026 and 2028 comparable EBITDA outlook which reflects our customers steady demand for access to our assets under our unique long term, low risk, take or pay and rate regulated commercial constructs. For 2026, our comparable EBITDA outlook remains at 11.6 to 11.8 billion, which represents roughly a 7% actual to midpoint increase relative to an exceptional performance in 2025 and it represents an 8% actual to midpoint annualized increase
Sean
relative to 2024. Looking out to 2028, we continue to target comparable EBITDA of 12.6 to 13.1 billion, implying a 6% actual to midpoint 3 year annualized growth rate that is fully underpinned by SAnctioned projects advancing towards in service dates. Moving to the right hand side of the page, we summarize several additional factors that could influence our EBITDA outlook over time. While our EBITDA is highly contracted, we have ongoing revenue enhancement initiatives and cost and capital optimization programs across the organization that are in flight, each of which have the potential to drive incremental upside. We’ve added a Project Execution Dashboard to provide a unique level of visibility on the key projects that are driving EBITDA growth over the next few years. Collectively, these projects account for the majority of our capital allocation and expected EBITDA growth. You’ll note that we have a clear line of sight to our in service base and our build multiples, similar to 2025 where we placed over $8 billion of projects into service on time and 15% below budget.
Sean
The team is carrying that momentum into 2026 where our projects are tracking on schedule and on or under budget. We’re providing a lot of detail on this slide, but you’ll note that the majority of investment activity is concentrated in the US where we are seeing commercial and regulatory tailwinds that are supporting a weighted average build multiple of 6.2x. Notwithstanding the attractive positioning of the portfolio today, project execution continues to be a strong focus given how critical it is to our continued growth.
Sean
Strong execution is a direct reflection of the discipline embedded in our low risk project selection process and the strength of our cross functional project delivery capabilities. It is this consistency in our team’s execution excellence year in and year out that is foundational to our ability to deliver the financial outlook we provide and also reinforces the confidence we have in both our near term forecasts and our longer term growth trajectory.
Sean
I’ll wrap this slide up by underscoring that the visibility we are sharing on our next wave of projects continues to validate the quality, repeatability and low risk nature of our project backlog. It’s that backlog and our team’s ability to execute that underpin our EBITDA outlook and continued shareholder value proposition. I’d like to turn to our investment outlook with our updated capital Allocation Dashboard. This chart further demonstrates the depth, diversity and continued growth of our project portfolio through the end of the decade.
Sean
With today’s announcement of the Appalachia Supply project, we converted approximately $2.2 billion of investment capital from pending approval into SAnctioned last quarter. We also added over 2 billion of new high conviction substantially de risked projects to our pending approval bucket which continues to support near term project announcements. Beyond the project portfolio on this slide we have about $15 billion of additional projects in origination that are competing for capital allocation this decade.
Sean
To give you a sense for where some of this $15 billion backlog stands and our confidence in converting them to SAnctioned capital over the next year or two, Francois mentioned that we recently conducted two open seasons in the US that were substantially oversubscribed that we’re extremely excited about. Similarly, in Canada we’ve launched the first in a series of expected new offerings on NGTL while continuing to advance parallel discussions on a new growth investment framework with customers.
Sean
I’ll wrap this slide up with a few comments about how we are thinking about capital allocation going forward. Over the next couple of years we will continue to look to optimize and bring forward capital to support up to $6 billion of annual net capital deployment as we look after the latter part of the decade and are considering the project backlog we discussed. It is this high value largely in Carter opportunity set that will define our level of net investment. We remain committed to maintaining the balance sheet strength and our 4.75 times leverage target and we will continue to execute projects with excellence. These guide rails are fundamental to our risk and capital allocation screening process which supports the ability to exceed the $6 billion annual level, particularly as we near the conclusion of the Bruce mcr program post 2030. As Francois highlighted earlier, that is the scenario which is now in our planning window that sets us up very well for continued ebitda growth towards 2030 and beyond.
Sean
With that update, I’ll pass the call back to Francois.
Francois Poirier (President and Chief Executive Officer)
Thanks Sean. We’ve got an exciting year ahead and our strategic priorities remain clear and firmly in place. We’ll continue to maximize the value of our assets through safety and operational excellence while leveraging commercial and technological innovation. We will prioritize low risk, high return growth. More announcements are expected throughout this year and thirdly, we will maintain our financial strength and agility to support long term value creation.
OPERATOR
Operator we are now ready to take questions.
OPERATOR
Thank you. To join the question queue you May press star then 1. On your telephone keypad you will hear a tone acknowledging your request. Please limit your questions to two and if you should have additional questions, please re enter the queue. If you’re using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing any keys. To withdraw your question, Please press star then 2. The first question comes from Praneet Satish with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.
OPERATOR
The first question comes from Aaron McNeil with TD Cowen. Please go ahead.
Aaron McNeil (Equity Analyst at TDCON)
Good morning all, Thanks for taking my questions. Appreciating the implication that the Appalachia Supply Project arguably has a bit of pre spend for future growth, can you give us a sense of what the economics of a fully loaded project at 2 BCF might look like from a build multiple perspective? And then what needs to happen to get to 2 BCF per day and when do you think that could happen by?
Tina Ferraco
Good morning Erin. This is Tina Ferraco. I’ll kick off with a response to that question. We’re really excited to about announcing our Appalachian Supply Project this morning. For many reasons over and above the headlines that we talked about, when we make capital allocation decisions we look many years ahead and the scenarios around placing this line into service gives us a strong long term growth trajectory. So the nature of these facilities in terms of pipeline extension and compressor modifications is an opportunity for …
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