Exporter of natural gas Venture Global shares fell 4% in their first day of trading as the company sought to test investor appetite for energy stocks amid the Trump administration’s efforts to implement a sweeping agenda aimed at boosting oil and gas production.
“The Trump administration has made it very clear that it supports growing LNG exports,” Venture director Mike Sabel said in an interview with CNBC on Friday.
Shares ended the day at $24, putting the company’s market capitalization at around $58 billion. Venture is the second largest LNG exporter in the US Cheniere.
The company has set its price initial public offering of 70 million shares at $25 each 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 in early trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday afternoon.
Even before that opening of trading, Venture had already sharply cut 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 raise 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. With a valuation of around $60 billion, it would be the tenth largest public energy company.
Venture is in various stages of commissioning, construction and development of five natural gas liquefaction and export facilities near the Gulf of Mexico in Louisiana. Those projects are expected to have a peak production capacity of 143.8 million tons per year, according to the company’s prospectus.
However, Venture is locked in arbitration with clients including large companies such as Shellwhich accuse the company of failing to deliver an LNG cargo under a long-term contract from its Calcasieu Pass plant in Louisiana.
Meanwhile, the president Donald Trump on Monday he declared a national energy emergency and issued an executive order reversing the Biden administration’s pause on new LNG export projects, removing a potential roadblock to Venture’s growth.
Trump’s policies, combined with cold winter weather and expected strong AI demand, are helping boost natural gas prices and related stocks. Shares of Cheniere, for example, are up more than 20% since Trump was elected. Natural gas prices rose 44% over the same period.
Correction: The CEO of Venture Global is Mike Sabel. An earlier version of this story misspelled his name.
