Certarus Expands into Utah with New CNG Supply Hub, Secures 60 MW Data Center Award
Superior Plus bets big on data-center gas delivery, raising growth ambitions even as near-term CNG margins sag and free cash flow targets are scrapped.
The most recent updates come from two releases on May 13, 2026. Superior Plus reported Q1 2026 results alongside a strategic pivot in its Certarus compressed natural gas (CNG) business.
Q1 2026 earnings: Revenue fell to $897.4M from $1,008.4M a year earlier, while Adjusted EBITDA dropped to $245.9M from $260.5M. The decline was concentrated in CNG, where Adjusted EBITDA fell to $38.4M from $55.1M despite record volumes of 9.38 million MMBtu, as lower ancillary revenue and wellsite pricing bit. U.S. propane was soft, but Canadian propane posted a gain. Adjusted EBITDA per share edged up to $0.91, and free cash flow per share slipped to $0.87 from $0.94.
Guidance and capital allocation shift: The company raised its expected 2027 Adjusted EBITDA growth rate to 5% from the prior 2%, driven by over $350 million in data-center energy contracts signed in the past nine months. To support that growth, 2026 capital spending is being hiked to $230M from $160M, with the extra funds directed at CNG infrastructure for hyperscale data centers. In turn, Superior withdrew its previous free cash flow growth guidance for the 2024-2027 period and acknowledged leverage will remain elevated — 3.9x at end-2026, falling to 3.5x by end-2027. Share buybacks, which had removed ~14% of outstanding shares since November 2024, are now taking a back seat to CNG investment.
Utah hub and new data-center award: Separately, Certarus announced it is commissioning a CNG supply hub southeast of Salt Lake City, Utah, and has secured a contract as the primary gas supplier for a 60 MW hyperscale data center project in the region. Operations are set to begin this month. The contract covers initial commissioning and early operations until permanent infrastructure is built.
The two releases together mark a meaningful shift in Superior’s narrative. The company had been on a downgrade cycle: in Q3 2025 it cut 2025 EBITDA growth to ~2% from 8%; full-year 2025 results in February 2026 then guided to only ~2% growth for 2026 and a 2% CAGR through 2027. Today’s news reverses that trajectory by projecting 5% growth in 2027, squarely on the back of data-center deals.
The data-center story is no longer just a concept. The April 20 contract (>$300 million revenue, 135 MW) and today’s 60 MW Utah award build a visible revenue pipeline. Together with the “$350M in contracts over 9 months” figure, the company is demonstrating tangible conversion of the data-center demand tailwind into backlog. The decision to prioritize CNG capex over buybacks signals management’s confidence in these returns.
However, the material positive is tempered by near-term realities. CNG profitability is deteriorating despite record volumes, showing that the legacy wellsite and ancillary businesses are still under pressure. The withdrawal of free cash flow growth guidance and higher leverage are non-trivial negatives for a risk-averse investor. The Q1 earnings miss on headline numbers also suggests the propane baseline remains sluggish.
On balance, the raised medium-term outlook and concrete data-center wins are genuinely new and upside-surprising enough to categorize as material positive. The market had been pricing in stagnation after a string of downgrades; this update breaks that pattern. Still, the improvement is highly reliant on execution of a capital-intensive, long-duration build-out, and the free cash flow implications introduce a new layer of uncertainty.
Superior Plus Corp. is a North American energy distribution company operating through two main segments: propane distribution (U.S. and Canada) and compressed natural gas (CNG) via its wholly-owned subsidiary Certarus Ltd. The flagship growth project is Certarus’ mobile CNG platform, which uses the industry’s largest portable compression fleet and CNG transport trailers to supply natural gas to customers not connected to pipelines. The primary growth driver has shifted to providing natural gas for hyperscale data centers, which face long timelines for permanent grid and pipeline connections. The company leverages its mobile, rapidly deployable infrastructure to feed backup/prime power generation at data-center sites before permanent gas lines are built. This strategy is unfolding through a sequence of large contracts (Utah 60 MW, previous 135 MW) and dedicated supply hubs (Florida, now Utah).