CNX Resources (CNX) — Stock Analysis 2026 [3.7]

Analysis as of 29 July 2026. This is a point-in-time snapshot, not an evergreen guide. Fundamentals are from CNX Resources’ fiscal-2025 Annual Report (10-K, year ended 31 December 2025, filed 10 February 2026) and its Q1 2026 results; market data (share price, market cap, multiples, analyst targets) is as of 24–28 July 2026 and will move. Rating: ★★★½, Solid — Fairly valued on a mid-cycle gas deck → priced about right, with the edge in the catalysts rather than the entry. Price deck used in the valuation (Table 3b grid, V26): base Henry Hub US$3.50/MMBtu — the fixed-grid rung nearest the representative trailing average of Henry Hub through mid-2026 — with bear US$3.00 (the reversion/long-term case) and bull US$4.00, all three rungs of the fixed 2.5–4.5/MMBtu grid; spot ~US$3.25 and the EIA’s US$3.49 (2027) forecast are 0%-weight cross-checks. 10% discount rate, sensitised 8–12%. Refreshed on each annual report and on material events. For information only, prepared with AI assistance — see the disclaimer at the end.

CNX Resources is the quiet, unfashionable end of Appalachian gas: no dividend, 390 employees, almost no liquids, and a business built on owning four million acres of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio and Virginia outright and squeezing gas out of them for fifteen cents a thousand cubic feet. The thesis in one line: a low-cost, long-life, self-funded dry-gas producer that has bought back a tenth of its own shares and generated free cash flow for twenty-five consecutive quarters — but which is shrinking, carries the heaviest leverage of its peer set, and is already priced for the mid-cycle gas price it needs. Why look now: the 2026 hedge book is struck at US$2.74/Mcf against a market near US$3.50, and that gap closes mechanically in 2027–2028. To screen CNX against every North American upstream name on production, cost, reserve life and free-cash-flow yield, go to Metal Pilot.

1. Snapshot & thesis

CNX Resources Corporation (NYSE: CNX) is an independent natural gas exploration, development and production company headquartered in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, with an integrated midstream arm. It is a producer/operator by archetype and an energy producer by sector, operating in two reportable segments — Shale (Marcellus and Utica in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio) and Coalbed Methane (the Pocahontas #3 seam in Virginia) — plus a small Other segment. In FY2025 it produced 1.72 billion cubic feet equivalent per day (Bcfe/d), 92% dry natural gas, from 4,488 net producing wells across 3.97 million net acres, of which 99% of the unproved position is held by production. (Mcf = thousand cubic feet; Mcfe = thousand cubic feet equivalent, with liquids converted at 6 Mcf per barrel; Bcfe = billion cubic feet equivalent; Tcfe = trillion cubic feet equivalent.)

Figure 1. CNX Resources in numbers

Figure data: CNX Resources FY2025 Form 10-K (production, reserves, costs, debt, buyback); market data and analyst consensus as of 24–28 Jul 2026. Rating per Section 9.

Table 1. CNX Resources in numbers

Source: CNX Resources FY2025 Form 10-K for all operating and financial figures; market data, net debt and analyst consensus as of 24–28 Jul 2026. EV = market cap + net debt. Free cash flow is operating cash flow (US$1,029 m) less capital expenditures (US$495 m). Leverage uses the company’s trailing-twelve-month adjusted EBITDAX of ~US$1.32 bn at 31 Mar 2026. Listed: Public (NYSE: CNX).

Thesis in brief. Bull: you are buying the lowest-cost operating base in Appalachia — US$0.15/Mcfe to lift gas, a 15.4-year reserve life, 99.1% of reserves operated and 99% of the acreage held by production — at roughly 9× free cash flow with an 11% free-cash-flow yield, run by a management team that has retired a tenth of the share count in a single year and has US$2.4 billion of buyback authorization left. Bear: it is a pure price-taker on one commodity with no liquids buffer, its volumes are guided down in 2026, it carries the heaviest leverage of the Appalachian peer set, and at US$34.20 the shares already trade at roughly 1.4× a proved-reserve net asset value struck on a mid-cycle deck. What tips it: whether Appalachian gas demand — data-centre load and LNG pull — lifts realized prices enough to justify paying above the reserve value for the inventory behind it. The full rating and its rationale are in Section 9.

How to read this analysis: here for the verdict? The statcards above and the rating in Section 9 are the whole story. Want the evidence? Read Section 2 (the assets) through Section 7 (the valuation).

2. Assets & operations

Everything about CNX runs off one price. Henry Hub has settled into a range near US$3.20–3.35/MMBtu through mid-2026, with the U.S. EIA forecasting an average of US$3.67/MMBtu for 2026 and US$3.49 for 2027 — a market held down by record dry-gas production (111 Bcf/d in 2026) even as LNG exports climb to 17.4 Bcf/d and power-sector burn reaches a record. For the full picture of how gas is priced, who produces it and how the Appalachian basis discount works, see the Natural Gas — A Complete Market Guide . This section spends its words on the company. For how CNX compares with the other four large US gas producers on one construction — scale, cost, reserve value, balance sheet and the nine-point scorecard — see US Upstream Natural Gas Producers Compared .

2.1 Portfolio overview & map

CNX’s portfolio is not a set of discrete projects but one contiguous Appalachian land position, developed from a shared gathering and water network. What makes it unusual is the tenure: of 3.52 million net unproved acres, 3.48 million — 99% — are held by production or fee, meaning CNX pays nothing to keep them and faces no drilling clock. Leases with expiry inside two years are about 1% of the net unproved position.

Table 2. Asset base by segment, 31 December 2025

Source: CNX Resources FY2025 Form 10-K , Summary of Properties and segment MD&A. WI = working interest. Reserves are net of royalty on an SEC (SPE-PRMS) basis, effective 31 Dec 2025, at an average first-day-of-month Henry Hub price of US$3.387/MMBtu. Margin is realized price less total production costs including depreciation, depletion and amortization. Listed: Public (NYSE: CNX).

The concentration is stark: 91.5% of proved reserves and 94% of production sit in the Shale segment, where CNX holds approximately 557,000 net Marcellus acres and 612,000 net Utica acres (about 341,000 of the Utica coinciding with the Marcellus), plus 52,000 Upper Devonian acres it does not currently drill. The Virginia CBM position — 283,000 net acres, 3,784 net wells — is 6% of volumes and loses money on a fully-loaded basis; it is in the portfolio as the platform for the remediated-mine-gas business (Section 5), not because the gas pays.

2.2 Revenue split by commodity & business line

Two cuts of the same revenue base show why CNX has no shelter from the gas price. By commodity, the company is almost purely dry gas: US$1,736 million of the US$1,914 million of hydrocarbon revenue — 90.7% — came from natural gas, with NGLs at US$168 million (8.8%) and oil/condensate at just US$8 million (0.4%). The liquids uplift is trivial and shrinking: excluding hedges, liquids added only US$0.05/Mcfe to the average gas price in 2025, down from US$0.17 in 2024. What little there is prices off crude — CNX realized US$21.30/Bbl on NGLs and US$55.26/Bbl on condensate, so the Oil guide covers the market that sets it. Where Antero Resources books 32% liquids and can lean on propane and ethane when gas is soft, CNX cannot.

Figure 2. FY2025 hydrocarbon revenue by commodity

Figure data: CNX Resources FY2025 Form 10-K ; derived from FY2025 volumes (580.6 Bcf gas, 7,907 Mbbl NGL, 153 Mbbl oil/condensate) and realized prices (US$2.99/Mcf gas, US$21.30/Bbl NGL, US$55.26/Bbl oil), which reconcile to the reported US$1,914 m of natural gas, NGLs and oil revenue.

By business line, the picture is a little less monolithic. Beyond the two producing segments, CNX earns a genuine non-hydrocarbon strip: US$78 million from sales of environmental attributes, US$69 million of third-party gathering revenue, US$22 million of excess firm-transportation income and US$15 million of water services — US$184 million in total, about 9% of operating revenue and disproportionately high-margin.

Figure 3. FY2025 operating revenue by business line

Figure data: CNX Resources FY2025 Form 10-K , segment MD&A and Other Revenue and Operating Income. Excludes the US$97 m gain on commodity derivative instruments and US$45 m of purchased gas revenue, which are pass-through or mark-to-market items rather than operating revenue.

Read together: CNX is a dry-gas company with a small, valuable services and attributes tail. That tail is what separates it from a commodity clone — it is the part of the business that does not simply track Henry Hub — but at 9% of revenue it cannot carry a thesis on its own, and environmental-attribute revenue fell 18% in 2025.

2.3 The Shale segment

The Shale segment is CNX. It produced 590.8 Bcfe in FY2025, up 15.5% year-on-year, and holds 8,844 Bcfe of proved reserves, 73% developed. Volume growth came from the US$518 million acquisition of Apex Energy II, LLC, completed on 27 January 2025, which added a central-Pennsylvania upstream and midstream position, and from the timing of new wells turned in line — offset by normal declines. Realized gas prices rose 52.6% to US$2.93/Mcf, but hedges gave back US$0.31/Mcf, leaving the segment’s total realization at US$2.70/Mcfe, up only 3.1%.

The cost structure is the argument for owning this business. Shale lease operating expense is US$0.12/Mcfe, production and ad valorem fees US$0.04, transportation, gathering and compression US$0.54 (low because CNX owns the gathering), and DD&A US$0.83 — total production costs of US$1.53/Mcfe against a US$2.70 realization, for a US$1.17/Mcfe production margin, up 9.3% year-on-year even in a mediocre price year. Development activity, however, is falling: 18.9 net development wells drilled in 2025, down from 25.7 in 2024 and 30.8 in 2023, with 10.0 net drilled-but-uncompleted wells and 2.0 net completions waiting to be turned in line at year-end. No exploratory wells were drilled in any of the three years.

The key asset-level risk is the one the cost structure cannot fix: Appalachian gas realizes below Henry Hub, and CNX’s average gas price of US$2.99/Mcf against a US$3.387/MMBtu SEC benchmark is the size of that discount in a single number.

2.4 The Coalbed Methane segment

The CBM segment produced 37.8 Bcf in FY2025, down 3.3% on normal declines, and holds 813 Bcfe of proved reserves, 61% developed, from approximately 283,000 net acres over the Pocahontas #3 seam in Virginia. It realized US$3.61/Mcf — a premium to Shale, because CBM gas is high-Btu and sells into a tighter local market — but its costs are far higher: lease operating expense of US$0.64/Mcf, transportation, gathering and compression of US$1.69/Mcf and DD&A of US$1.56, for total production costs of US$4.06/Mcf and a negative US$0.45/Mcf margin. The segment lost US$17 million before tax in 2025, an improvement on the US$26 million loss in 2024.

CNX drilled no CBM wells in 2025, 2024 or 2023. The reason the segment survives is that it is the platform for remediated mine gas (RMG) capture from active and abandoned coal mines in the region — methane that would otherwise vent — which is the source of the environmental-attribute revenue in Section 5. Read honestly, CBM is a declining, cash-negative gas business attached to a small, higher-margin attributes business. The single asset-level risk is that the attributes market, not the gas, determines whether it is worth keeping.

2.5 Other assets & the development pipeline

Beyond the two producing segments, CNX holds three things worth naming. First, approximately 2,600 miles of owned and operated gathering pipelines plus processing facilities, part of which sit inside CNX Midstream Partners LP (detailed in Section 4.3). Second, an option secured with the Apex transaction granting CNX the right to acquire Utica Shale oil and gas rights beneath the legacy Apex Energy footprint, paid for in three annual instalments of US$16 million from 2026 — a second bench under an already-owned position. Third, a water sourcing, delivery and disposal business serving CNX’s own completions and third parties, which generated US$15 million in 2025.

The “pipeline” in the conventional sense is the undrilled land itself: 710,414 net unproved Shale acres, 1.86 million net CBM acres in other states with no drilling plan, and 946,000 net acres of shallow rights, almost all held by production — against only 26,092 net acres booked as proved undeveloped. That gap is where the long-run optionality lives, and where a valuation must decide what to pay for land that generates nothing today.

2.6 Production, reserves & costs (consolidated)

At the group level CNX produced 629 Bcfe in FY2025 (1.72 Bcfe/d) — 92% natural gas, 8% liquids; 94% Shale, 6% CBM. Proved reserves stood at 9,662 Bcfe (9.66 Tcfe) at 31 December 2025 on an SEC (SPE-PRMS) basis, 89.5% natural gas, 72.2% proved developed and 99.1% operated, up 13.2% from 8,538 Bcfe a year earlier — an increase driven substantially by the Apex acquisition rather than the drill bit, since only 18.9 net wells were drilled. The resulting reserve life is 15.4 years at 2025 production rates, against roughly 12.8 years for Antero Resources on its 19.1 Tcfe of proved reserves and 4.1 Bcfe/d of 2026 guidance. Group lifting cost, excluding ad valorem and severance taxes, was US$0.15/Mcfe, up from US$0.13 in 2024 and US$0.11 in 2023.

The uncomfortable half of the group profile is the direction of travel. 2026 guidance is 605–620 Bcfe — a 1.4% to 3.8% decline on 2025 — on base capital expenditure of US$540–570 million, of which US$390–410 million is drilling and completions. This is a company converting a long-life asset into cash and shares, not one growing volumes.

Figure 4. Production by fiscal year, FY2023–FY2026E

Chart source: CNX Resources FY2025 Form 10-K . FY2025 volume (629 Bcfe) is as reported; FY2023 and FY2024 volumes are derived by dividing reported natural gas, NGLs and oil revenue (US$1,302 m and US$1,186 m) by the reported average sales price excluding derivatives (US$2.32 and US$2.15/Mcfe). 2026 guidance of 605–620 Bcfe (midpoint plotted) per the Q1 2026 results . Total realized price including hedges moved US$2.61 → 2.66 → 2.75/Mcfe (Table 4) — that second series is carried in the table rather than overlaid (rule A13).

2.7 Peer positioning

CNX’s natural comparison set is the four large Appalachian-focused natural gas producers: EQT Corporation (NYSE: EQT), the basin’s largest; Expand Energy Corporation (Nasdaq: EXE), the largest US gas producer by volume; Antero Resources Corporation (NYSE: AR), the liquids-rich Appalachian name; and Range Resources Corporation (NYSE: RRC), the closest analogue in scale and southwest-Pennsylvania geography. Every “vs. peers” claim in this analysis — each scorecard star, the cost read, the valuation multiples in Section 7 — uses that set.

Table 3. Quality-metric peer positioning, mid-2026

Source: company guidance and results as reported — EQT Q2 2026 results (2026 guidance 2,375–2,450 Bcfe), Expand Energy Q2 2026 results , Antero Resources FY2025 results and 2026 guidance , Range Resources Q2 2026; CNX per its FY2025 Form 10-K and Q1 2026 guidance. Leverage ratios are on each company’s latest reported basis and are not strictly comparable (GAAP debt/EBITDA vs. net debt/adjusted EBITDAX); “n/d” = not disclosed on a comparable basis in the sources used. Figures are approximate and should be refreshed at publish.

Where CNX sits: the smallest and most levered of the group, with the longest reserve life and the lowest lifting cost, and the only one guiding volumes down. It is roughly a quarter of EQT’s scale and a fifth of Expand’s, with none of Antero’s or Range’s liquids optionality. That is the crux the scorecard has to quantify — genuinely excellent unit economics and asset tenure, attached to a sub-scale, shrinking, single-commodity, levered balance sheet.

3. Financials & balance sheet

FY2025 was CNX’s best year since the 2022 gas spike, and the headline flattered it. Net income was US$633 million (US$3.98 diluted), reversing a US$90 million loss in 2024 — but US$278 million of that swing was an unrealized mark-to-market gain on commodity derivatives, and a further US$97 million came from gains on asset sales. The cash story is cleaner and less dramatic: operating cash flow of US$1,029 million less US$495 million of capital expenditure gave US$534 million of free cash flow, and the company has now generated positive free cash flow for 25 consecutive quarters through Q1 2026.

Table 4. Five-year financial summary

Source: CNX Resources FY2025 Form 10-K for FY2023–FY2025 income statement, cash flow and per-unit figures; stockanalysis.com (S&P Global Market Intelligence, drawn from prior CNX filings) for FY2021–FY2022 revenue, net income, EPS, cash flow and net debt, and for the five-year net-debt series on one consistent basis. “—” = not disclosed on a consistent basis within the FY2025 filing window. Total revenue includes gains and losses on commodity derivative instruments, which is why it swings by more than 170% in a year while realized prices move by cents — the natural gas, NGLs and oil revenue line is the better read of the underlying business. Free cash flow is operating cash flow less capital expenditures. CNX pays no dividend.

The balance sheet is the weak link. CNX ended 2025 with US$2,421 million of debt — US$600 million of 7.25% notes due March 2032, US$500 million of 6.00% notes due January 2029, US$500 million of 7.375% notes due January 2031, US$400 million of CNX Midstream 4.75% notes due April 2030, and US$209 million of 2.25% convertible notes due May 2026 — against just US$13 million of cash. Interest expense was US$171 million, up from US$151 million, and net debt rose because CNX funded the US$518 million Apex acquisition and US$524 million of buybacks in the same year. Liquidity is nevertheless comfortable: a US$1.4 billion senior secured revolver with a US$2.4 billion borrowing base, redetermined semi-annually. The convertible resolved cleanly — on 28 January 2026 CNX elected to settle it in shares rather than cash, removing the 2026 maturity but lifting the share count (up 9.05% year-on-year by mid-2026). Net debt at 31 March 2026 was approximately US$2.53 billion, roughly 1.9× the trailing adjusted EBITDAX of US$1.32 billion — heavier than EQT (0.84× debt/EBITDA), Range (0.73×) or Expand (~0.5×).

Hedge & treasury posture. CNX runs one of the most aggressive multi-year hedge programmes in the basin, using physical supply contracts and financial over-the-counter swaps to manage both outright price and in-basin basis. As of 8 January 2026 the book covered 448.8 Bcf of estimated 2026 production at US$2.74/Mcf, 379.3 Bcf of 2027 at US$3.28/Mcf, 186.5 Bcf of 2028 at US$3.25/Mcf and a nominal 2029 volume. Against a spot market near US$3.25 and an EIA 2026 forecast of US$3.67, the 2026 strip is materially below market — the programme cost CNX US$0.31/Mcf in 2025 and the mark-to-market on open commodity derivatives at 31 December 2025 was a net liability of US$296 million. This is the honest trade: CNX has bought cash-flow certainty for its capital programme and its buyback, and paid for it with upside. The strikes step up in 2027 and 2028, which is the single most mechanical source of margin improvement in the story.

Capital returns are all buyback, no dividend. CNX repurchased 16,869,709 shares in 2025 at an average price of US$31.00, for US$528 million including excise tax — about 11% of the shares outstanding at the start of the year, and 99% of the year’s free cash flow. As of 31 December 2025, US$428 million of the US$2.9 billion cumulative authorization remained; on 29 January 2026 the board added US$2.0 billion, taking available capacity to approximately US$2.4 billion — roughly half the current market capitalisation.

Figure 5. Free cash flow by fiscal year, FY2021–FY2025

Chart source: Table 4, this analysis; CNX Resources FY2025 Form 10-K and stockanalysis.com for FY2021–FY2022. Total revenue (which swings on derivative marks) and net debt (rising from US$2.27 bn to US$2.60 bn) are read from Table 4 rather than overlaid as additional series (rule A13).

4. Management, strategy & corporate structure

4.1 Management & governance

CNX is led by President and Chief Executive Officer Alan K. Shepard, promoted from the Chief Financial Officer’s chair with more than twenty years in the energy sector — a finance-trained operator at a moment when the strategy is explicitly about per-share value rather than volume. The board is chaired by Ian McGuire and has eight members — compact for a company of this size — overseeing strategy through standing committees including a dedicated Environmental, Safety and Corporate Responsibility (ESCR) Committee, which governs the environmental-attribute strategy and operating standards. The CEO also serves as the chief operating decision maker for segment reporting, reflecting an integrated view of the upstream and midstream businesses. Governance practice is anchored in a Quality Management System (QMS) standardising health, safety and environmental controls across a workforce of just 390 employees — 44 in midstream, 54 in the Virginia CBM operations — with no collective bargaining agreements.

The governance question a reader should weigh is concentration of judgement: a first-time chief executive, an eight-person board, and 2.78% insider ownership against 98.44% institutional holding. There is no disclosed related-party conflict, but there is also little insider capital standing behind the buyback-led strategy.

4.2 Strategy & capital allocation

The stated strategy is to blend cash flow from current operations with responsible development of the Appalachian resource to create long-term per-share value — and the capital-allocation stack makes that concrete: fund a disciplined US$540–570 million 2026 programme (US$390–410 million of drilling and completions, US$150–160 million of non-D&C), then split the residual between share repurchases and debt reduction. Three named sub-strategies sit on top. First, commercialisation of internally developed proprietary technologies intended to cut both cost and emissions during development — a genuine differentiator in intent, though the 10-K states plainly that there has been no material impact to the financial statements from these activities to date. Second, growing the volume and value of environmental attributes, monetising remediated mine gas through the Pennsylvania Alternative Energy Portfolio Standard and voluntary carbon markets. Third, leveraging owned midstream and water infrastructure to serve both its own development and third parties.

The forward targets are unusually modest and unusually specific: 605–620 Bcfe of 2026 production, US$1,265–1,315 million of adjusted EBITDAX (revised down at Q1 2026 from US$1,310–1,360 million), and approximately US$525–550 million of free cash flow, including about US$45 million from expected asset sales and roughly US$20 million from 45Z clean-fuel tax credit sales. This is not a growth plan; it is a cash-conversion plan.

4.3 Ownership & corporate structure

Three structural facts define the corporate entity. The most material is the acquisition of the natural gas upstream and associated midstream business of Apex Energy II, LLC on 27 January 2025 for approximately US$518 million in cash, which expanded the central Pennsylvania footprint and drove the 15.5% rise in Shale volumes, and which carried the option over Utica Shale rights beneath the legacy Apex acreage (three annual payments of US$16 million from 2026). Second, CNX Midstream Partners LP operates part of the gathering network as a separately-financed subsidiary with its own US$600 million revolver and US$400 million of 4.75% senior notes due April 2030, neither guaranteed by CNX — a ring-fence that flatters recourse leverage. Third, CNX separated its coal business in 2017 into what is now Core Natural Resources, Inc. (formerly CONSOL Energy Inc.); the two carry mutual indemnification obligations for certain historical liabilities, including the UMWA 1974 Pension Plan settlement — a residual claim from a business CNX no longer operates.

On the equity side, the structure is straightforward: 142,590,509 shares issued and outstanding at 31 December 2025 (down from 148,879,640 a year earlier on buybacks), no preferred stock outstanding, and the 2.25% convertible senior notes due May 2026 — conversion price US$12.84 — settled in shares in 2026, which is why the count rose 9.05% year-on-year despite the repurchase programme. Short interest stands at 15.83 million shares, 11.19% of shares outstanding — an unusually crowded short for a free-cash-flow-positive producer, and a structural fact worth knowing before reading the price action.

5. ESG & sustainability

CNX’s environmental profile has one genuinely distinctive feature and a set of otherwise conventional programmes. The distinctive feature is remediated mine gas (RMG) capture: CNX holds the right to capture methane from active and abandoned coal mines across its Virginia CBM footprint and, on a more limited basis, in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana and New Mexico. That methane would otherwise vent to atmosphere as third-party mining progresses, so capturing it is a direct abatement of a high-global-warming-potential gas — and CNX monetises it through the Pennsylvania Alternative Energy Portfolio Standard (AEPS) programme, other compliance schemes and voluntary offset buyers, generating US$78 million of environmental-attribute revenue in 2025, down from US$95 million in 2024 on lower volumes sold and lower prices.

The governance and social layers are conventional but real. Sustainability is overseen by the board’s Environmental, Safety and Corporate Responsibility Committee, and operating standards run through the Quality Management System, which unifies health, safety, environmental and quality controls with internal and external audits and company-wide stop-work authority for every employee and contractor. Named social programmes include continuing-education assistance, a diversity commitment focused on the Appalachian home region, and emergency-preparedness drills run with local municipalities and responders, reviewed biannually. In April 2026 CNX marked its first full year of “dynamic” ESG reporting, having replaced the conventional annual sustainability report with a continuously-updated format.

The balanced read: the RMG business is a rare case of an oil and gas producer earning money from abatement rather than merely disclosing it, and it is governed at board level — but the attribute revenue fell 18% in a year, the filing itself warns that these markets are “volatile” and carry “significant risk associated with eligibility, qualification and compliance,” and the shift to dynamic reporting makes year-on-year comparison against peers harder, not easier. The 10-K discloses no quantified emissions-intensity or safety-frequency targets, so this analysis does not attribute any to the company.

6. Risks

Table 5. Risk register

Source: CNX Resources FY2025 Form 10-K risk factors, MD&A, segment disclosures and Supplemental Gas Data; net debt per stockanalysis.com at 31 Mar 2026. Likelihood and impact are the author’s assessment.

The through-line: CNX has engineered away almost every operating risk a gas producer can control. It owns its land outright, operates 99.1% of its reserves, gathers its own gas, and lifts it for fifteen cents. What it has not engineered away — and structurally cannot — is one commodity price and one balance sheet. Its biggest single vulnerability is a sustained Henry Hub price below roughly US$3.00, at which point the hedges that currently look like a drag become the only thing protecting the buyback. Its most idiosyncratic exposure is the hedge book itself: having sold 449 Bcf of 2026 production at US$2.74 into a market near US$3.25–3.50, CNX has already given away most of this year’s price recovery. And its most stubborn structural issue is scale — at 1.7 Bcfe/d against Expand’s 7.5, it has the highest leverage and the least room to absorb a bad year.

Two of those risks compound rather than offset: leverage and price are the same risk seen twice. At US$3.50 gas, adjusted EBITDAX of ~US$1.3 billion carries US$2.53 billion of net debt comfortably at ~1.9× and leaves roughly US$525 million of free cash flow for the buyback; at US$2.75, EBITDAX compresses toward US$1.0 billion, leverage moves toward 2.5×, and the discretionary cash that funds the repurchase — the main reason to own the equity — is squeezed first. Nothing in the capital structure breaks: the US$2.4 billion borrowing base and the 2029 maturity wall mean there is no forced event. The thesis simply stops working. Which price regime arrives is a macro question rather than a company one — Commodities Across the Cycle sets out the regimes in which gas leads and lags. And declining production is what makes price risk harder to grow out of: a company adding volumes can offset a weaker price, and CNX has chosen not to.

Figure 6. Risk heat-map

Figure data: this analysis; risks per the register above.

7. Valuation

Valuation as of 29 Jul 2026, in USD. Horizon: spot fair value. Deck (Table 3b rungs, V26): bear US$3.00/MMBtu, base US$3.50/MMBtu, bull US$4.00/MMBtu Henry Hub — the base is the fixed-grid rung nearest the representative trailing average of Henry Hub through mid-2026, and the bear sits at the reversion/long-term rung; spot ~US$3.25 and the EIA’s US$3.49 (2027) forecast are 0%-weight cross-checks. Discount rate 10% (a single-commodity dry-gas producer with above-peer leverage), sensitised at 8% and 12%.

This section applies the Metal Pilot valuation module for a producer/operator archetype. The primary intrinsic method is a net asset value built off the company’s own SEC-basis PV-10 of proved reserves, adjusted to the base price deck and bridged to equity — the honest anchor for a company whose reserve report is audited and whose mine plan is simply “keep drilling the Marcellus.” The primary relative methods are free-cash-flow yield and price-to-free-cash-flow against the Appalachian peer set, with EV per Mcfe of proved reserves as a cross-check. A headline P/E is deliberately not used: FY2025 GAAP earnings contain US$278 million of unrealized derivative marks and US$97 million of asset-sale gains, and CNX’s reported trailing EV/EBITDA of 3.2× is an artefact of that distortion, not a signal.

Method selection. Proved-reserve NAV bridged to equity (primary intrinsic) · free-cash-flow yield and P/FCF vs. peers (primary relative) · EV/proved-Mcfe and a corporate free-cash-flow perpetuity (cross-checks). No transaction-comp analysis is run: no comparable Appalachian corporate transaction is disclosed in the sources used here, and inventing one would be worse than omitting it.

7.1 Net asset value

CNX discloses the two numbers this build needs. At the SEC benchmark of US$3.387/MMBtu, the PV-10 of proved reserves was US$6,830 million at 31 December 2025 (up from US$3,827 million at US$2.130 a year earlier — a reminder of how violently gas NAV levers to price), reconciling to a standardized after-tax measure of US$5,066 million. Adjusting the PV-10 to the US$3.50 base deck lifts it to approximately US$7.1 billion; the remaining work is adding what the reserve report excludes and subtracting what sits ahead of equity.

Table 6. NAV build-up (base case: US$3.50/MMBtu Henry Hub, 10% discount)

Source: this analysis; PV-10, standardized measure, discounted income taxes, hedge mark-to-market and acreage per the CNX Resources FY2025 Form 10-K ; net debt and share count per stockanalysis.com at 31 Mar 2026. The additions for midstream, attributes and unproved acreage are the author’s risked estimates, not disclosed figures, and are the least certain part of the build. Plugging and abandonment is already inside the PV-10 development costs (US$1,017 m undiscounted, US$70 m on a PV-10 basis) and is not deducted twice. Fully diluted shares are 141.5 m outstanding plus ~2.5 m of in-the-money options, restricted stock units and performance share units.

Figure 7. NAV build-up waterfall

Figure data: Table 6, this analysis.

A base-case NAV of ~US$25/share against a US$34.20 price means the market is paying about 1.4× the proved-reserve value. That is not automatically a red flag: an SEC reserve report books only five years of proved undeveloped locations at flat trailing prices, so it systematically undervalues a company with 15.4 years of reserve life, four million net acres and no lease-expiry pressure. But it does define what an owner is actually buying — roughly nine dollars a share of undrilled inventory and price optimism that the audited reserve report does not support.

Table 7. NAV/share sensitivity — Henry Hub price × discount rate

Source: this analysis; NAV/share in US$, from the Table 6 model. Price columns are the fixed natural-gas grid (Table 3b), US$2.50–4.50/MMBtu Henry Hub, so the base (US$3.50) is a grid rung and the bear (US$3.00) and bull (US$4.00) scenarios are two more of these columns. A one-rung (US$0.50/MMBtu) move in Henry Hub shifts NAV/share by roughly ±US$5–6, or about ±22% — the operating leverage of a levered, single-commodity producer with US$2.53 bn of net debt sitting between the asset and the equity.

Figure 8. NAV/share sensitivity — Henry Hub price × discount rate

Figure data: Table 7, this analysis.

7.2 Relative valuation

At US$34.20 and ~141.5 million shares, market capitalisation is ~US$4.84 billion and enterprise value ~US$7.37 billion. Against 2026 guided adjusted EBITDAX of US$1,265–1,315 million that is roughly 5.7× EV/EBITDAX — in line with EQT’s 5.6×, not below it — and against guided free cash flow of US$525–550 million it is about 9× P/FCF for an 11% free-cash-flow yield. On reserves, EV per Mcfe of proved reserves is ~US$0.76, against ~US$0.80 for Antero on its 19.1 Tcfe.

Table 8. Relative valuation vs. the Appalachian peer set, July 2026

Source: stockanalysis.com (S&P Global Market Intelligence) for peer market caps, enterprise values, P/FCF, free-cash-flow yield, net debt and analyst consensus, as of 24–28 Jul 2026; Expand Energy net debt per its Q2 2026 results . Peer P/FCF and FCF yield are on a trailing-twelve-month basis; CNX’s are shown on its 2026 guided free cash flow of US$525–550 m, because its trailing figures are distorted by derivative marks — the two are therefore not perfectly comparable. EV/EBITDA is deliberately excluded from this table: trailing GAAP EBITDA is distorted in opposite directions across this group (CNX’s inflated by unrealized derivative gains, Antero’s depressed by them). “n/d” = not disclosed in the sources used. Multiples are approximate and should be refreshed at publish — screen the live peer set on Metal Pilot.

The relative read is middling, not cheap. CNX’s free-cash-flow yield of ~11% is essentially identical to EQT’s and comfortably above Antero’s and Range’s — but EQT offers that yield at 0.84× leverage, with four times the production and a dividend. CNX’s discount is not a valuation anomaly waiting to close; it is what the market charges for sub-scale, single-commodity, higher-levered exposure. The 11.19% short interest says the same thing from the other direction.

7.3 Cross-check: cash-flow perpetuity

Because CNX is a no-growth, low-decline cash machine, a second intrinsic view is simply to capitalise the cash. Underlying free cash flow, stripping the ~US$45 million of guided asset sales and ~US$20 million of 45Z credit sales, is roughly US$475 million for 2026. Capitalised as a perpetuity: at a 10% cost of capital with zero growth, enterprise value is US$4.8 billion, less US$2.53 billion of net debt, or ~US$16/share; at 8% with 1% growth, US$6.8 billion less net debt, or ~US$30/share. The market’s US$34.20 implies something close to an 8% cost of capital and a terminal growth rate above 1% — a full price for a business guiding volumes down.

7.4 Scenario analysis

Table 9. Scenario valuation (illustrative, not forecasts)

Source: this analysis; illustrative scenarios, not forecasts. The three decks are three rungs of the fixed natural-gas grid (Table 3b, V26); NAV/share is read from the Table 7 grid at the 10% base discount rate. Spot ~US$3.25 and the EIA’s US$3.49 (2027) forecast are 0%-weight cross-checks, and the bear rung sits below the EIA’s US$3.67 (2026) / US$3.49 (2027) forecasts.

7.5 Valuation conclusion

Triangulating the proved-reserve NAV (~US$25 base case, US$21–31 across the reasonable price band), the cash-flow perpetuity (US$16–30), the peer free-cash-flow yield (implying ~US$32 at EQT’s 11.55%), book value of US$32.59/share and the Street’s US$37.82 target gives a blended value range of roughly US$26–36 per share, centred near US$31 — against a US$34.20 price. The value read is therefore Fairly valued, sitting in the upper half of that range: a modest downward tilt on the intrinsic anchor, a modest upward tilt on the relative and consensus measures. The anchor is the reserve-based NAV, because it is built from audited figures; the spread between it and the market price is not an error but a statement about how much undrilled Appalachian inventory the market will pay for. The Street broadly agrees — 12 analysts, consensus Hold, US$37.82 target (+11%), published targets spanning US$32 (Morgan Stanley, Underweight) to US$42 (Mizuho, Neutral), with no Buy conviction behind them. Assumptions box: valuation date 29 Jul 2026; balance sheet as of 31 Mar 2026; horizon spot fair value; USD throughout. Price deck (Table 3b rungs, V26) bear US$3.00 / base US$3.50 / bull US$4.00 per MMBtu Henry Hub — base is the fixed-grid rung nearest the representative trailing average of Henry Hub through mid-2026, bear at the reversion/long-term rung; spot ~US$3.25 and the EIA’s US$3.49 (2027) forecast are 0%-weight cross-checks; nominal deck, 10% base discount rate, sensitised 8–12%. ~144 m fully diluted shares; net debt ~US$2.53 bn at 31 Mar 2026. Method weights: the reserve-based NAV anchors the read, cross-referenced to the free-cash-flow-yield and cash-flow-perpetuity reads; the analyst-consensus target carries 0% weight (V12). NAV built from the company’s disclosed SEC-basis PV-10 with author-risked additions for midstream, environmental attributes and unproved acreage; NAV is author-built on the company-published PV-10. To run the same NAV and multiples across every North American upstream name, screen the sector on Metal Pilot.

8. Near-term catalysts (1–3 years)

CNX’s forward upside over the next two to three years is unusually mechanical — it comes from contracts repricing and shares being retired, not from new production. That is both the strength and the limitation of the story.

Table 10. Near-term catalysts (1–3 years)

Source: CNX Resources FY2025 Form 10-K (hedge book, buyback authorization, Apex Utica option, debt maturities, New Technologies), Q1 2026 results (2026 guidance and 45Z credits) and the U.S. EIA Short-Term Energy Outlook , July 2026. Timing reflects company guidance and is not guaranteed.

The common thread is that none of these require CNX to spend more money. The hedges reprice on their own; the buyback is funded from free cash flow; the demand growth is someone else’s capital expenditure. The swing factor is not execution — it is whether Henry Hub cooperates while the hedges roll.

9. Rating & verdict

CNX is scored on the Metal Pilot Company Scorecard — the same nine dimensions, on the same ★1–5 scale, that every North American upstream name in the series is scored on, so the peers are directly comparable. Each star is relative to the Appalachian gas peer set declared in Section 2.7 and substantiated below.

Table 11. The CNX Resources scorecard

Source: the Metal Pilot Company Scorecard; evidence in Sections 2–7. Peer basis: the four large Appalachian-focused natural gas producers named in Section 2.7 (EQT, Expand Energy, Antero Resources, Range Resources).

Weighted average = (0.45 + 0.60 + 0.75 + 0.125 + 0.45 + 0.60 + 0.1875 + 0.3125 + 0.25) = 3.73/5 → rounds to the published ★★★½, Solid. Weights follow the archetype-weighted scheme for the producer/operator archetype (dimensions 1/2/3/5/6 at 15% each, dimensions 4/7/8/9 at 6.25% each) per Table 2 of the Metal Pilot Company Scorecard playbook.

The two-axis verdict. Quality Solid (★★★½) × Value Fairly valued → priced about right: the assets are better than the equity, and the edge is in the catalysts rather than the entry. The quality axis is durable and genuinely bifurcated: three dimensions score at or near the top of the basin — reserve life, jurisdiction and cost position — while growth scores ★★☆☆☆ and scale, leverage and governance sit at the median. That is an unusual shape. It says CNX owns something very good and is not, at present, doing very much with it beyond converting it into cash and shares.

The value axis is the dated layer, and it is why the verdict is not warmer. At US$34.20 the shares sit above the US$25 proved-reserve NAV, above the US$16–30 cash-flow perpetuity band and roughly at book value — the blended US$26–36 range puts the price in its upper half — while the ~11% free-cash-flow yield is the same yield EQT offers at half the leverage and four times the scale. What tips the verdict from bear to bull is the hedge roll: 449 Bcf sold at US$2.74 for 2026 becomes 379 Bcf at US$3.28 for 2027, and if Henry Hub holds near the EIA’s US$3.49 forecast, that repricing lifts realized margin without CNX drilling a single additional well. What tips it the other way is gas below US$3.00, where US$2.53 billion of net debt in front of a shrinking production base stops being a detail. This is an analytical read of quality and price, not a recommendation.

To go from this single-name view to the whole peer group — screening every North American upstream producer on production, cost, reserve life, net debt and free-cash-flow yield — explore Metal Pilot.

10. Sources, methodology & disclaimer

10.1 Sources, methodology & data vintage

Company fundamentals, structure, management, hedge posture, reserves, acreage, segment economics and risk factors are from CNX Resources Corporation — 10-K Filing / Annual Report — 2025 (fiscal year ended 31 December 2025, filed 10 February 2026, audited by Ernst & Young LLP), including its Summary of Properties, Detail of Operations, segment MD&A, Note 5 (Stock Repurchase), Note 12 (Long-Term Debt), Note 19 (Derivative Instruments) and Note 22 (Supplemental Gas Data, unaudited). Forward guidance is from the company’s Q1 2026 results (30 April 2026). Reserve figures are SEC (SPE-PRMS) proved reserves net of royalty, effective 31 December 2025, at an average first-day-of-the-month Henry Hub price of US$3.387/MMBtu; PV-10 is the company’s disclosed non-GAAP pre-tax measure and the standardized measure is the GAAP after-tax equivalent.

Market data (share price US$34.20 at the 28 July 2026 close, ~141.5 million shares outstanding, market cap ~US$4.84 billion, net debt ~US$2.53 billion at 31 March 2026, short interest 11.19% of shares outstanding), peer statistics and the 12-analyst Hold consensus with its US$37.82 target are from stockanalysis.com , sourced from S&P Global Market Intelligence, as of 24–28 July 2026. FY2021–FY2022 financial history falls outside the FY2025 filing window and is drawn from the same provider on prior CNX filings, marked as such in Table 4. The price deck is from the U.S. EIA Short-Term Energy Outlook , July 2026 edition. Peer operating figures are from each company’s own results releases as cited in Table 3.

Methodology and its limits. Enterprise value, EV/EBITDAX, P/FCF, free-cash-flow yield and EV per proved Mcfe are derived from those inputs. The net asset value starts from the company’s own disclosed PV-10, adjusted to the stated deck, and adds author-risked estimates for third-party midstream and water cash flows, environmental attributes and unproved acreage — those three lines are not disclosed figures and are the least certain part of the build; the cash-flow perpetuity cross-check is likewise the author’s model. Peer figures are approximate and flagged for refresh at publish. No transaction-comparables analysis or figure is produced, because no comparable disclosed Appalachian corporate transaction was available in the sources used. The asset-map figure is omitted — a proportional-symbol map of net acreage by state is drawn geometry the component library does not express, and this post type generates no SVG (rule A13), so Table 2 and the §2.1 concentration prose carry the by-state footprint instead; every published figure is an inline HTML/CSS component. Data as of 29 July 2026; refreshed on each annual report and on material events. Note that CNX reports Q2 2026 results on 30 July 2026, one day after this analysis date. Provenance: CNX Resources Corporation — 10-K Filing — 2025.

10.2 Disclaimer & disclosure

This analysis is for informational purposes only and is not investment advice; do your own research or consult a licensed advisor. It is a point-in-time snapshot as of 29 July 2026 — share prices, multiples, analyst targets and the valuation read move, and reserve, production and net-asset-value figures are estimates as of the stated dates. The two-axis verdict is an analytical read of quality and price, not a personal buy or sell instruction. This report was prepared with AI assistance; figures were sourced from CNX Resources’ filings, the U.S. EIA and market data and reviewed, but readers should verify before acting. The author holds no position in CNX Resources as of the date of writing.