National Fuel Gas Q4 2026: 17% Earnings Beat and a Split Ahead

National Fuel Gas reported Q4 2026 adjusted earnings per share of $1.22, clearing the consensus estimate of roughly $1.04 by 17%. Revenue of $467.8 million came in just under the $472.4 million estimate, missing by less than 1%, though it still rose about 2.5% from the same quarter a year earlier. The quarter's headline earnings number matched Q3 2026's result but arrived with a noticeably wider beat against Wall Street's expectations.

The outperformance on the bottom line was anchored in the Integrated Upstream and Gathering segment, where the realized natural gas price after hedging rose to $2.80 per thousand cubic feet, up from $2.61 in the prior year period. That improvement more than absorbed a 7% decline in Seneca production, where natural declines outpaced new wells brought online. Higher per-unit operating costs, including increased lease operating expense related to third-party gathering, did eat into some of that pricing gain.

The quarter closed out what management called an excellent fiscal year. For full fiscal 2026, National Fuel posted adjusted EPS of $7.55 against an estimated $7.25, a 4% beat, while full-year revenue reached $2.515 billion, up roughly 10% year over year. Total assets grew 26.5% to $11 billion, in large part because the company completed its acquisition of CenterPoint Energy's Ohio natural gas utility on October 1, doubling the utility rate base and adding about 335,000 customers overnight.

National Fuel announced plans to spin off its Integrated Upstream and Gathering segment as a separately listed company called Seneca Resources in the second half of calendar 2027. After that separation, National Fuel itself would become a fully rate-regulated natural gas utility with approximately $5 billion in rate base. CEO David P. Bauer described the goal as establishing two scaled, financially sound publicly traded natural gas businesses.

On the shareholder return front, the company raised its annual dividend to $2.22 per share, the 56th consecutive annual increase. That streak now spans more than five decades and underscores the regulated utility character management is leaning into. For fiscal 2027, the company guided adjusted EPS of $6.00 to $6.40, a range that assumes a NYMEX natural gas price of $2.85 per MMBtu and an effective tax rate of about 24%, and it includes a full year of upstream and gathering results before the eventual spin-off.