Kimbell Royalty Partners, LP ($KRP)

Greetings, and welcome to the Kimbell Royalty Partners First Quarter Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Rick Black. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Kimbell Royalty Partners conference call to review financial and operational results for the first quarter, which ended March 31, 2026. This call is also being webcast and can be accessed through the audio link on the Events and Presentations page of the IR section of kimbellrp.com. Information recorded on this call speaks only as of today, May 7, 2026. So please be advised that any time-sensitive information may no longer be accurate as of the date of any replay listening or transcript reading. I would also like to remind you that the statements made in today's discussion that are not historical facts, including statements of operational expectations or future events or future financial performance are considered forward-looking statements made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. We will be making forward-looking statements as part of today's call, which, by their nature, are uncertain and outside of the company's control. Actual results may differ materially. Please refer to today's earnings press release for our disclosure on forward-looking statements. These factors and other risks and uncertainties are described in detail in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Management will also refer to non-GAAP measures, including adjusted EBITDA and cash available for distribution. Reconciliations to the nearest GAAP measures can be found at the end of today's earnings release. Kimbell assumes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. I would now like to turn the call over to Bob Ravnaas, Kimbell Royalty Partners' Chairman and CEO. Bob?

Thank you, Rick, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us this morning. With me today are several members of our senior management team, including Davis Ravnaas, our President and Chief Financial Officer; Matt Daly, our Chief Operating Officer; and Blayne Rhynsburger, our Controller. To start off, we are pleased to report strong first quarter results and robust drilling activity across our acreage. Our production exceeded the midpoint of our guidance, demonstrating once again the resilience of our high-quality, diversified and low decline production base. Our active rig count remains strong with 85 rigs drilling across our acreage, representing a market share of U.S. land rigs at 16%. This favorable first quarter performance allowed us to declare a Q1 2026 distribution of $0.41 per common unit, up 11% from Q4 2025 as we continue to focus on returning value to unitholders. This distribution reflects an annualized tax advantage yield of approximately 11% based on yesterday's closing price. As we look to the remainder of 2026, higher oil prices to support a modest uptick in activity across our oil-weighted basins. Many operators are likely to accelerate the completion of DUCs to capture improved pricing while gradually increasing rig counts over time. While oil prices have been volatile in recent weeks due to macro uncertainty stemming from the Middle East conflict, they remain elevated when compared to historical levels, and we believe the current forward strip is conducive to incremental activity. We remain bullish about the U.S. oil and natural gas royalty industry and our role as a leading consolidator in the sector. We are encouraged by the opportunities in front of us and look forward to continuing our growth as we strive to expand our industry-leading portfolio of assets. I'd like to thank all of our employees for their hard work and dedication in driving Kimbell forward and for their role in helping to generate long-term unitholder value. And now I'll turn the call over to Davis.

Thanks, Bob. Good morning, everyone. As Bob mentioned, this is another strong quarter for Kimbell. I'll now start by reviewing our financial results for the first quarter. Oil, natural gas and NGL revenues totaled $82.9 million during the first quarter and run rate production was 25,522 BOE per day, which exceeded the midpoint of our guidance. On the expense side, first quarter general and administrative expenses were $9.4 million, $5.3 million of which was cash G&A expense or $2.31 per BOE, well below our guidance range and a reflection of our continued operational discipline and positive operating leverage. Total first quarter consolidated adjusted EBITDA was $68 million. You will find a reconciliation of both consolidated adjusted EBITDA and cash available for distribution at the end of our news release. This morning, we announced a cash distribution of $0.41 per common unit for the first quarter of 2026. We estimate that approximately 72% of this distribution is expected to be return of capital and not subject to dividend taxes, further enhancing the after-tax return to our common unitholders. This represents a cash distribution payment to common unitholders that equates to 75% of cash available for distribution and the remaining 25% will be used to pay down a portion of the outstanding borrowings under Kimbell's secured revolving credit facility. I'd also like to point out that during the first quarter, we repurchased and canceled 500,000 units of the company's common stock for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $7.3 million at an average price of $14.60 per unit. This reflects our confidence in the underlying strength of the business and our view that the shares were trading below intrinsic value, making the repurchase an efficient use of capital while maintaining balance sheet discipline. Moving now to our balance sheet and liquidity. At March 31, 2026, we had approximately $440.9 million in debt outstanding under our secured revolving credit facility, which represented a net debt to trailing 12-month consolidated adjusted EBITDA of approximately 1.6x. We also had approximately $184.1 million in undrawn capacity under the secured revolving credit facility as of March 31, 2026. We continue to maintain a conservative balance sheet and remain very comfortable with our strong financial position and enhanced flexibility. Today, we are also affirming our financial and operational guidance ranges for 2026. As a reminder, our 2026 guidance outlook was included in the Q4 2025 earnings release. We remain confident about the prospects for continued development in 2026, given the number of rigs actively drilling on our acreage, especially in the Permian as well as our line-of-site wells exceeding our maintenance well count. In closing, we are excited about our position as a leading consolidator in the highly fragmented U.S. oil and natural gas royalty sector, which we estimate exceeds $850 billion in size, Long-term demand for U.S. energy is expected to continue to grow, and we are well positioned to benefit through our diversified portfolio of high-quality royalty assets across the leading U.S. basins. With that, operator, we are now ready for questions.

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from Tim Rezvan from KeyBanc Capital Markets.

I want to start, I know about 2/3 of your line-of-site wells are in the Permian and sort of a group think that, that will be the basin that would be the first mover given the call for oil globally. But I was curious kind of what you're seeing sort of elsewhere in your portfolio? Are you seeing any increases in other places such as the Mid-Con where there's less natural gas constraints?

Yes, absolutely. We're seeing activity actually, strangely enough, we're seeing an uptick in the Bakken for the first time in a while. We're seeing activity in the Eagle Ford. Yes, on the Mid-Con, which is obviously on a relative basis, a larger contributor to our overall portfolio. But yes, we would expect to see the preponderance of increased activity in the Permian.

Good to know. And then when I last spoke with you all in March, you gave the comments that your peers have echoed that higher oil prices should bring sellers to the table and help with M&A. We saw a large peer announce a sizable transaction earlier this week. So I was just wondering if we could kind of get your lay the land on the M&A front and sort of what you're seeing and maybe what's got you excited?

Yes. Great question. There are a couple of packages in the market now. We try to look at everything that we can. We'd like to believe that we go to look at pretty much every sizable acquisition out there. Nothing imminent to report, but of course, actively evaluating opportunities. I would say that the increase in oil price, to your point, makes sellers more willing to transact -- at the same time, working against that to a certain extent is the volatility. So we've seen a few groups walk away because they have a more bullish view on what oil prices are going to do versus others. So I think what we'll see happen is once we reach some sort of minimized level of volatility and people have a little bit more of an agreement between the buy side and the sell side on where the new equilibrium is to speak, I think that's when you'll start seeing a larger volume of transactions occur.

Okay. Okay. That makes sense. And if I could sneak one last one in. We noticed the repurchases in the first quarter. If we see where the stock is today, it's been a tough month for the industry here. it's trading below kind of the average first quarter repurchase price, and we also see WTI at $91 here. So how are you thinking about repurchases versus debt paydown, call it, in the next couple of quarters?

Yes, great question. We want to be opportunistic. We've seen periods of time where our stock has traded down for inexplicable reasons. And so we had a conversation at the management and Board level about putting a program in place. Obviously, we started with a relatively modest repurchase, but we do have the authorization to do something that's more meaningful. So I think we'll be opportunistic over time, trying to take advantage of inefficiencies and dislocations in our stock price where we believe that our shareholders would benefit from -- on a long-term basis from a repurchase I will say that we are not -- we do not intend to divert the 75% payout to our dividends for repurchases. So that would -- and I know you know this, but I'm just saying this for the benefit of others on the call, it would be a trade-off between debt paydown and repurchases of our stock with the 25% component of our free cash. That's what we're going to be weighing going forward.

The next question is from Nick Armato from Texas Capital.

Maybe for my first one, on your outlook for the remainder of the year, you delivered a strong quarter on both the oil and gas side, which puts you roughly at the midpoint for the full year guide. Do you think that there's some upside to this given your strong performance in the first quarter and the stronger commodity environment that we're seeing?

I do. I would like to believe that you'll see increased activity. We're certainly hearing -- we're hearing from other operators in their comments this quarter that they expect some improvement in drilling rates over the course of this year. I think some are more in a wait-and-see approach. Others are being a little bit more aggressive. We're hearing from private operators that they're going to be more aggressive than the public operators, which has traditionally been the case historically. So yes, we try to be conservative always when issuing guidance and when reaffirming it. But I do see -- just given the precipitous rise in oil prices this year, all things being equal, we may see or we could expect to see increased drilling activity across our portfolio.

Perfect. Maybe for my follow-up, how do you all generally think about the cycle times for the conversion of DUCs to production and permits to DUCs? And maybe more specifically, do you think the stronger commodity environment will change those time lines versus maybe six months ago?

That's a great question. I would say that historically, and I'll turn that over to Bob to add some comments. I guess I'll make one point. Traditionally, we've seen DUCs come online on average within six months and permits, let's call it, up to a year. So that's how we think about it is on an average basis. But to your point, probably more activity sooner rather than later just given how quickly -- and I know that's subject to internal operational issues that some of these operators have in terms of accessing the services they need. But in a higher price environment, at least in the past, we've seen those time lines accelerate. We've also seen more rapid permitting activity in higher-priced environments. And our net DUC and permit inventory, by the way, doesn't even include our minor properties, which may contribute up to an additional 20% to our inventory. So we feel very good about the near-term line of sight on development on the properties and feel even better in today's higher oil price environment that those numbers could improve and that the time lines could accelerate. But Bob, anything you'd add on development cadence in this environment?

No, no, I agree with everything you said.

This concludes the question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the floor back over to Bob Ravnaas for closing comments.

We thank you all for joining us this morning, and we look forward to speaking with you again next quarter. This completes today's call.

This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time.