Natural gas exporter Venture Global shares fell 4% in its first day of trading, as the company looked to test investor appetite for energy stocks amid the Trump administration efforts to implement a sweeping agenda aimed at boosting oil and gas production.
“The Trump administration has made very clear they support growing LNG exports,” Venture CEO Mike Sabel told CNBC in an interview Friday.
Shares ended the day at $24, putting the company’s market capitalization around $58 billion. Venture is the second-largest LNG exporter in the U.S. behind Cheniere.
The company had priced its initial public offering of 70 million shares at $25 to raise $1.75 billion for a total valuation of about $60.5 billion. But the stock opened 3.8% below that price at $24.05 when trading began on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday afternoon.
Even before that opening trade, Venture had already steeply slashed its IPO price from its original target. The company had originally planned to offer 50 million shares in a range of $40 to $46, which would have raised about $2.2 billion at the midpoint for a total valuation of $110 billion.
Still, Venture’s IPO is the largest by an oil and gas company in a decade and the fourth-largest since 2000. At a valuation of around $60 billion, it would be the tenth-largest publicly traded energy company.
Venture is in various stages of commissioning, building and developing five natural gas liquefaction and export facilities near the Gulf of Mexico in Louisiana. Those projects are expected to have peak production capacity of 143.8 million tonnes per year, according to the company’s prospectus.
However, Venture is locked in arbitration with customers, including majors such as Shell, who are accusing the company of failing to deliver LNG cargoes under long-term contract from its Calcasieu Pass plant in Louisiana.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump on Monday declared a national energy emergency and issued an executive order overturning the Biden administration’s pause on new LNG export projects, removing a potential obstacle to Venture’s growth.
Trump’s policies, combined with cold winter weather and expected robust demand from artificial intelligence, is helping to drive both natural gas prices and related stocks higher. Cheniere shares, for example, have climbed more than 20% since Trump was elected. Natural gas prices rose 44% over that same time.
Correction: Venture Global’s CEO is Mike Sabel. An earlier version of this story misspelled his name.
