Black Stone Minerals, L.P. (BSM) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day, everyone, and welcome to today's Black Stone Minerals First Quarter 2023 Earnings Release. [Operator Instructions] Please note this call will be recorded, and I will be standing by if you should need any assistance. It is now my pleasure to turn the conference over to Mr. Steve Putman, Senior Vice President and General Counsel. Please go ahead.

Thanks, Todd, and good morning to everyone. Thanks for joining us either by phone or online for Black Stone's First Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. Today's call is being recorded and will be available on our website along with the earnings release that was issued last night. Before we start, I'd like to advise you that we will be making forward-looking statements during this call about our plans, expectations and assumptions regarding our future performance. These statements involve risks that may cause our actual results to differ materially from the results expressed or implied in our forward-looking statements. For a discussion of these risks, you should refer to the cautionary information about forward-looking statements in our press release from yesterday and the Risk Factors section of our 2022 10-K and our 10-Q later.  We may refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures that we believe are useful in evaluating our performance. Reconciliation of those measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measure and other information about these non-GAAP metrics are described in our earnings press release from yesterday, which can be found on our website at www.blackstoneminerals.com. Joining me on the call from the company are Tom Carter, Chairman and CEO; Evan Kiefer, Interim Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer; Carrie Clark, Senior Vice President, Land and Commercial; Garrett Gremillion, Vice President of Engineering and Geology; and Thad Montgomery, Vice President of Land. I'll now turn the call over to Tom.

Thanks, Steve. Good morning to you all, and thank you for joining us today to discuss our first quarter 2013 results. We posted a strong quarter and despite headwinds in the current pricing environment, we continue to see success in our development programs with Aethon and various operators in the chalk, among others. We generated total production volumes for the quarter of 39,300 BOE per day, a decrease of 8% from our fourth quarter volumes. The primary driver of that reduced oil volumes in the Permian. Fourth quarter '22 volumes were unusually high due to first-time payments from several major operators that span multiple months that were collected in that period. Royalty volumes came in at 36.8 MBoe per day and 24% above the first quarter of 2022. We continue to see strong production in the Haynesville/Bossier, both Louisiana and in the Shelby Trough in East Texas. Aethon continues to ramp up production in the Shelby Trough and had 5 rigs on location at the end of the quarter and is expected to meet the minimum pace of 27 wells per year by the end of the year in Angelina and San Augustine counties.  To date, 20 wells have been turned to sales in the Shelby Trough under our development agreements with Aethon, 6 new wells since the beginning of the year and another 19 are in various stages of drilling and/or completion. In addition, 21 new gen multistage completions -- completion wells have been turned to sales in our concentrated acreage position in the East Texas Austin Chalk, with potential for an additional 14 wells this year. It is exciting to see the positive momentum from the organic initiatives that we focused on over the last couple of years, and we continue to work putting in place new long-term development deals to further accelerate production on our acreage with minimal capital requirements. This strategy has created incentives to continue developing through the commodity cycles, and we have expected to add long-term value to Black Stone and its unitholders. We saw a decrease in rigs operating on our acreage in the first quarter with 78 rigs running currently running on our acreage as of March 31. The decrease was driven largely from the Permian where we had a higher-than-average number of rigs in the fourth quarter. Black Stone's averages approximately 10% to 15% of the U.S. rigs drilling on our acreage and expect that to continue going forward. Despite the lower rig count in the first quarter, permitted activity in the first quarter remained in line with the fourth quarter with over 400 horizontal permits added on our acreage. Realized prices for the first quarter were approximately $77 per barrel and $3.50 per MMBtu. While both crude and natural gas were down in the quarter, we saw the benefit of our hedge portfolio, bringing in over $13 million for the quarter with hedge natural gas prices over $5 per MMBtu. We reported adjusted EBITDA of $109 million and distributable cash flow of $104 million for the first quarter, both up 11% to 12% from the first quarter of 2022. Despite some challenges with natural gas prices, we're confident in our guidance, and we're able to maintain the highest distribution Black Stone has had as a public company at $0.475 per unit for the first quarter. Overall, it was a great start to the year, and we continue to work on our new and existing operators to continue driving activity on our acreage. With that, I'll turn it over to Evan to walk through the details of the quarter.

Thank you, Tom, and good morning to everyone. After several record-setting quarters, oil and gas volumes came in lower for the first quarter. Our royalty volumes for the first quarter, as Tom mentioned, totaled 36.8 MBoe per day, which was down 8% relative to the fourth quarter, and total production for the quarter was 39.3 MBoe per day. We received the benefit of several new payments coming in from volumes that span multiple periods in the Haynesville and Permian in the fourth quarter of 2022. As a result, the first quarter oil volumes were down primarily in the Permian, where as we just mentioned, that there are several first-time payments from multiple operators that was collected over that period. While this is temporary in nature, the benefit of a large diversified mineral position is that this does occur from time to time, although it is difficult predicting it going forward.  And speaking of the Permian, we saw a decrease in rig activity on our acreage in the first quarter, which was down from 108 rigs at the end of the year. The decrease in rig activity was primarily driven by a significant number of rigs added on our Permian acreage in December, where we saw that move off in the first quarter. As you would expect, we see these ebbs and flows as operators move on and off our acreage as part of their normal development plans and expect to see the benefit of that drilling activity later this year. We also saw a rig reduction in the Haynesville in response to lower gas prices, which was contemplated in our full year guidance. These ebbs and flows in development activity for mineral owners is just one of the high- or just highlights the importance of the organic initiatives that we have been focusing on over the last couple of years. As Tom mentioned, Aethon has recently turned to sale 6 new wells and is expected to meet their minimum well commitments this year.  We've also made headway in the Austin Chalk, where we have 21 new generation multi-stage generation wells online to date and are expecting potential for 14 more this year. These are just 2 areas of our portfolio where we see 10 to 20 years of future development activity, and we're excited to see continued momentum from the operators there. Realized prices per BOE for the first quarter were approximately $33 per barrel, which was a decrease of 35% relative to the $51 per barrel seen in the fourth quarter. This just highlights the importance of our hedge program that is designed to provide some stability to our cash flows and provide downside protection in periods of high volatility. Our hedges brought in $13.3 million of realized hedge gains in the first quarter where the average strike price for natural gas was over $5 per MMbtu and approximately $80 per barrel for crude oil. These hedges will continue to provide support for our cash flows this year in the challenged pricing environment we currently face. We continue to add to our 2024 hedge position with an average strike price for natural gas at $3.64 per MMbtu and crude at $69.79 per barrel.  We will continue to build the 2024 position, targeting approximately 70-plus percent of our estimated volumes throughout the remainder of the year. For the first quarter, we reported $109.9 million of adjusted EBITDA and distributable cash flow for the quarter of $104.1 million. This is down 17% from last quarter, but our financial results benefited from a solid quarter of lease bonus at almost $4 million as well as reduced cash operating costs of approximately $3 million compared to the fourth quarter. Our total debt balance was $0 at the end of the quarter, and we currently have $66 million of cash on the balance sheet today prior to the distribution payment later this month. The borrowing base for our revolving credit facility was reaffirmed at $550 million with $375 million of commitments in April. Given the undrawn revolver and cash generated in the quarter, our Board of Directors supported maintaining the existing distribution of $0.475 per unit, which translates to 1.04x coverage for the quarter.  And with that, we'll go ahead and open the call for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question will come from Derrick Whitfield with Stifel.

For my first question, I wanted to focus on your 2023 guidance. Assuming the midpoint of the guide that you laid out in Q4, the implied trajectory for the balance of 2023 would be 2,000 barrels per day up on oil and $40 million to $50 million down on gas. Is that an accurate depiction of your projections based on wells in process? Or is it just simply too early to update guidance?

Yes. Thanks, Derrick. This is Evan, and thanks for the question. Yes. Typically in the past, we've always updated our guidance in the middle of the year. And I think just really right now with where the gas price environment is, we're still looking to see where rig counts and everything settles out in really the Louisiana Haynesville side before we update that guidance. Right now, we got off to a strong start on the gas volumes, particularly with the existing contracts with Aethon and everything in place with the Shelby Trough. And so we're really just planning on waiting until the 2Q update whenever we'll put out revised guidance numbers for everyone.

Terrific. That makes sense. And then as my follow-up and maybe leaning out on the gas side. With regard to your higher NRI development with Aethon and Exxon, are you expecting a change in operating behaviors as it relates to completion, flowback and/or curtailment activities?

Yes. So really focusing on the Shelby Trough with Aethon and even Exxon, as you mentioned. We don't see any change in the current development pace or completion schedules there. With the development agreements we have in place, there are criteria that requires them to drill and complete those wells. So as you probably remember, several years ago, we did have wells that were spud and then waited several years actually to be turned to sales. And so we've incorporated that knowledge into the current agreement that limits the amount of time from spud to overall completion in the Shelby Trough. And so we do not expect any major delays due to completion timing or changing of operations in the area.

Our next question comes from Tim Rezvan with KeyBanc Capital Markets.

I'd like to first ask about, I guess, Evan's final prepared comments on the distribution. You have the balance sheet flexibility to kind of -- you have essentially 100% of distributable cash flow, and you were near that level in the second quarter. But the gas price environment is sort of challenged in the near term. How do you think about -- or how should investors think about a payout ratio kind of going forward? I mean you could keep that $0.475 and draw on the balance sheet, but maybe that doesn't seem optimal. How are you thinking about that distribution longer term and the payout?

Yes, Tim, thanks. And this is Evan again. That's a great question and something that we look at a lot internally. And so right now, at a 1.04x coverage and really just with where the balance sheet is today, we do feel comfortable maintaining a little bit lower coverage in the near term, something that we always look for as we establish our distribution policy and what we look for going forward is something that we can have a stable to slightly growing distribution as we look at our forecast. And so I recognize that right now, there is some challenges on the natural gas side as well as potential volumes resulting in those lower prices. And as we continue to look at our forecast going forward, we'll revise and look at what we think the appropriate level is quarter-to-quarter. But whenever we set out that number and held that flat for the fourth quarter and the latest distribution, we were still expecting to have decent coverage going forward. And that's where we'll continue to look at that and potentially adjust as necessary if things change in the future. But really with the Aethon development agreements and even the Austin Chalk, where we expect to see ramping up production for the second half of the year, we still see growing volumes potentially from those areas that may mitigate some of the risks in the others, and that gives us confidence in the current guidance that we have outstanding.

Okay. That's helpful. And I guess we'll stay tuned on the new royalty production. For my second question, I'd like to dig into the track a bit more, some pretty constructive comments on visibility provided. So how should we -- can you generalize kind of the oil cuts of these talk wells coming on? I know it's variable across the play. And when we could really start seeing that impact total production? Do you think that's more a 3Q event? Should we look this quarter? When does the Chalk really become a big wedge in total production for you all?