EQT Corporation [NYSE: EQT]

Jeremy Knop

I began my professional career as an investment banker at Barclays, then transitioned to a principal investing role at The Blackstone Group, where I spent nearly 9 years investing capital throughout the sectors of the energy industry, encompassing credit and restructurings, joint ventures and structured and private equity. I joined EQT to lead our M&A strategy and 2.5 years later, I expanded my responsibilities when I stepped into the CFO role.

I have an amazing team supporting me, which allows me to focus on where I can add the most value. I primarily spend my time focused on capital allocation, strategic decision-making, investor relations and our commodities trading platform.

Finance and Operations Powering EQT Scale Decisions

Since joining EQT, we have executed over $30 billion of mergers, acquisitions and divestitures and through those actions transformed EQT from a small upstream gas company to the most valuable natural gas producer in North America and the only producer that is vertically integrated through unregulated and regulated pipeline assets. On a commodity price-adjusted basis, we have doubled our free cash flow per share and reduced our cost structure to a peer-leading level.

“The key building blocks to harness technological advances are clean, transparent data.”

EQT is a modern, digital organization that prizes transparency and collaboration. Finance should be the glue that brings together the organization into a centralized, cohesive decision-making process and capital allocation process based on data and first principles. To be able to do that well, the finance organization must understand all facets of the business and function as not just a central hub crunching numbers, but as an advisor and partner to leaders across the organization.

Clean Data Drives AI Readiness and Compounding

The key building blocks to harness technological advances are clean, transparent data. At EQT, we are maniacal about recording and logging data in a clean and structured way so that it is accessible across business units. The same goes for communications, too. The vast majority of our communication is done through our “digital work environment,” which promotes transparency but also lays the groundwork for AI-enabled advances and queries as technology improves, while also at the same time creating a wealth of data for record keeping and improving our ability to audit past decision-making processes and improve.

It all begins with understanding value and risk and importantly, absolute vs relative value. This is the foundation of finance, investing and capital allocation. In essence, your job is to accurately measure and forecast the cash flow generated by operations, work with operational leaders to identify strengths and weaknesses to improve earnings power and extend duration, then reinvest and compound the cash flow generated through the best risk-adjusted ways possible within and adjacent to your business.

Value Risk and Building Your Trusted Team

The critical flaw most financial professionals make is thinking every dollar of free cash flow is of equal value and getting sucked into “multiples math” and pseudo cash flow metrics like EBITDA. You must understand there are differences in the risk/repeatability, duration and growth profiles of cash flow. Learning how to navigate these characteristics and thoughtfully and patiently reinvest capital, then explain it in simple terms to your team, board and investors is critical.

And most critically, you must build up an exceptional team around you whom you trust so that you can focus on what creates the most value for the organization and do the things that only the CFO can do, rather than worrying about whether the train will stay on the tracks. You must then cultivate that talent through mentorship and empowering them internally and externally.