Press release
NFE Announces Update to Dividend Policy, Plan to Return Significant Capital to Shareholders
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- New Fortress Energy Inc. (NASDAQ: NFE) (“NFE” or the “Company”) announced today that its Board of Directors (the “Board”) has
About this update from New Fortress Energy Inc.
[{"type":"text","content":" NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--\nNew Fortress Energy Inc. (NASDAQ: NFE) (“NFE” or the “Company”) announced today that its Board of Directors (the “Board”) has approved an update to NFE’s dividend policy following a comprehensive evaluation. This update is part of NFE’s plan to return significant capital to its shareholders while continuing to fund substantial growth.\n\nThe dividend policy is being updated with a goal to provide a clear go-forward framework to NFE’s shareholders. Effective immediately, NFE is targeting an annual cash dividend equal to approximately 40% of its annual Adjusted EBITDA. In connection with adopting this dividend policy, the Board today declared a dividend of $3.00 per share, with a record date of January 4, 2023, and a payment date of January 13, 2023.\n\nThe dividend declared today, on an annualized basis, equates to approximately 40% of NFE’s Illustrative Adjusted EBITDA Goal of $2.5+ billion for FY2023. The Board will evaluate whether to declare a dividend every six months.\n\n“Our business is now generating significant, stable, and growing cash, which we believe affords us the ability to both retain capital necessary to grow and return excess capital to shareholders in the form of meaningful dividends,” said Wes Edens, Chairman and CEO of NFE. “We are fortunate to have a strong balance sheet and the liquidity we believe is necessary to execute our strategy and achieve our goals, matching long-term LNG supply with long-term power demand around the world.”\n\nNFE expects to generate more than $11 billion of additional liquidity over the next three years, which it plans to use primarily to facilitate accretive investments, including investments in floating LNG facilities and downstream capital expenditures, and to pay significant dividends to shareholders.\n\nIn addition to these priorities, other objectives of the dividend policy announced today include maintaining a strong and durable balance sheet, reducing our leverage ratio to below 1.0x by year-end 2025, allowing the Company to initiate a share buyback program, and achieving and maintaining an investment grade rating.\n\n“Over the years, we have found that the best companies are extremely disciplined about their use of capital and return to their shareholders the amounts they do not need,” continued Mr. Edens. “We believe the policy we are announ...