Ring Energy, Inc. (REI) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you for joining us today. My name is Jeff Robertson. I'm the Managing Director for Natural Resources at Water Tower Research. Joining us today for our fireside chat is Paul McKinney, Ring Energy's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. But before we begin, I would like to mention for participants that today's discussion could include forward-looking statements as of today, March 26, 2024. Ring's disclosures regarding such forward-looking statements can be found under the Investor Relations tab of the company's corporate homepage. With that housekeeping out of the way, Paul, welcome. Thanks for joining us today.

Thank you for having me, Jeff.

So Ring is an exploration and production company whose assets are concentrated in conventional plays in the Permian Basin, targeting the San Andres formation on the Northwest shelf and multiple stacked formations on the Central Basin Platform. Transformative acquisitions over the last 18 months have added scale to the asset base and increased the company's capacity to generate cash flow. Ring has generated adjusted free cash flow now for 17 consecutive quarters in part of Management's quest to really drive value through balance sheet accretive acquisitions, while -- all the while maintaining the goal of deleveraging the balance sheet. So let's get started. Paul, Ring is -- as I said, Ring's focused on conventional assets. Is there something about the capital intensity or the attributes of those types of assets that you believe fit the kind of cash flow model that support Ring's growth goals and value goals?

Yes. Jeff, a quick answer to that is yes. So we probably need to talk a little bit about unconventional and conventional. Unconventional shale development programs in the Permian Basin, I'm talking primarily in the Delaware Basin and the Midland basins, tend to require more capital to grow or even maintain production levels because of the higher cost of the wells, the specifics associated with their development practices, and we'll get into that a little bit, and the fact that the shale wells have higher decline rates and shorter well lives. The higher cost for the wells are attributed to the deeper well depths in both the Delaware and Midland Basins that lead to higher drilling costs. The lower permeability and porosity of the shale requires that the lateral lengths be longer, okay? And so -- and then they also require larger frac jobs, okay? And so the well costs are more. The wells in the Delaware and Midland Basins range anywhere between the $8 million and $12 million per well range. The specifics associated with their development practice, another point I made, are mainly due to the large multi-well pads that allow them to drill and complete these wells very efficiently. So when an operator drills multi-wells on a single pad, oftentimes, large amounts of capital are outstanding for longer periods of time before production from the pad or individual wells can even begin. And so when you compare these development characteristics with the capital intensity and production profiles of conventional assets, you'll find significant differences. Our wells cost less because they are at shallower depths, typically half the well depths of many of the wells drilled in the Delaware and in the Midland basins. And because the conventional carbonates that we're completing have higher permeabilities and porosities, the optimum horizontal well length is not nearly as long, okay? So that costs less. The frac stages or frac jobs per stage are considerably smaller and the stages per horizontal lengths tend to be less. All of this leads to much lower cost. Our well costs between $2.3 million and $3.8 million for a typical horizontal well and that depends on whether that was a 1-mile well or a 1.5-mile well. And our vertical wells cost between $1.3 million and $1.7 million. And so because we don't have these large, multi-well pad developments, we have much shorter cycle times. Often, we have oil producing into our tanks, I've talked about this before in the past, Jeff. But we oftentimes have oil flowing into the tanks before we receive our first invoice for the wells. And because of the higher permeabilities and porosities, we have shallower declines and longer well lives which reduces the volumes that are required to be replaced and maintain the production. All of this leads to a much more capital -- much lower capital intensity for conventional assets. And so the point you brought up is a very key difference and part of the reason why Ring is so focused on conventional assets because of these issues and the relationship we are with our leverage and where we want to take our balance sheet.

So on that note, Paul, so Ring can allocate capital a little differently with conventional assets as you might be required to do, if you had an asset base dominated by unconventional shales. Is that the way people think about it?

That's how they should think about it.

Okay. Ring -- as I mentioned, Ring did close 2 transformative acquisitions over the past 18 months, which benefited full year 2023 production, which I think grew 50% year-on-year and oil production grew more than 30%. Those 2 acquisitions include Stronghold in the third quarter of 2022 and then the Founders acquisition in 2023, which both underpinned full year '23 growth. When you think about the capital intensity that we just touched on and the acquisition market, how does -- how do you measure capital intensity in an acquisition when you look at the pro forma impact it could have on Ring's asset base?

Right. Well, it factors in greatly. And it is oftentimes difficult to evaluate. So let me explain. The capital efficiency for an individual well is not too challenging because it's an individual well. But when you consider the complexities of integrating the operations and limitations of a group of assets that you do not have firsthand experience operating, your estimates for a program capital efficiency can vary greatly and can be very challenging. So let's consider the last 2 acquisitions that we've already talked about as an example. When we acquired Stronghold, we assumed a development program based on the increased capital efficiency of many of the vertical well opportunities that came with that acquisition. Once we finished integrating the wells into our operations, we soon realized the limitations of some of the infrastructure in the various operating areas. So we ended up not drilling as many vertical wells as soon as we had originally planned and had to make up that production by drilling more horizontal wells in the North. That's what happened last year, okay? And so when we acquired Founders' assets last year, we spent a considerable amount of time evaluating really what we don't know and that's very important. And we integrated their assets. Once we integrated their assets into our operations, we soon realized that these ideas that we had to optimize our operations were real. We verified the infrastructure limitations and we resolved them before rushing in to drill a bunch of wells. This led to a much more capital-efficient program, reducing our capital intensity and leading to a much higher adjusted free cash flow generation, which, as you know, is a primary goal of our strategy is maximizing our adjusted free cash flow generation.

Let's talk about acquisitions for a minute. This industry has been consolidating ever since you started at it and well before that. But over the last year or so, there's been about $200 billion worth of upstream M&A transactions that have been announced. So some of -- many of those large transactions have yet to close. Can you characterize your sense of the acquisition market in the areas that Ring is interested and also maybe more importantly, for the types of assets that we've talked about that fit your model?

Yes. Yes. Well, for the past 6 months, the conventional assets we would like to acquire brought to the market through an efficient sales process have been slow. Oil prices have remained suppressed and volatile during this time, in our opinion, causing operators to -- of conventional assets to hold off bringing their assets to the market. However, we're seeing more stability lately in the oil prices. And as a result of these large, announced transactions, we are hopeful that these same large operators making these announcements will help offset the cost of their acquisition with the sale of their conventional CBP and Northwest Shale assets. We also believe that some assets that may not be put through a formal sales process can be acquired through targeted negotiations as well. This is something we've tried to do in the past. And even though we have been successful with these targeted negotiations, those targeted negotiations ended up leading those operators to run a sales process that we ultimately went out on. The bottom line is, we believe many of the very assets we are targeting to acquire will make their way into the marketplace over the next couple of years. And the pipeline of opportunities that will feed us will actually exceed our ability to acquire. And so we're going to be very picky. We're going to be very choosy in everything what we do.

Paul, since you [indiscernible] described the notion that some of these assets may be in either nontraditional oil and gas asset owners portfolios or they just -- as you mentioned, they become noncore to the new owner or the current owner after, maybe, with a more stable oil price environment, if that comes to pass in 2024, more of those assets might find their way into the market. Is that a reasonable way to think about it?

I think it is. Okay. So some of these companies that are being acquired have assets in the Central Basin Platform and in the Northwest Shelf and other conventional assets that we'd also be interested in the Permian Basin. But at the same time, the large operators that are making the acquisitions also have assets. These are areas would that have not drawn the attention of the company in terms of capital spend, so they're noncore. And so we really do believe that the dynamics that we're seeing played out in the marketplace right before us is going to lead to a continuous pipeline of opportunities for us to -- because the rest of the industry would say what you wanted to focus on the large resources of the Delaware and Midland basins because they move the needle for these larger companies. And these other companies that are being acquired or being acquired primarily for those assets and so anything that they have that's inside their portfolio that is not part of the Delaware or Midland, very inconsequential and so they'll probably rationalize. Most companies take this approach. They acquire and they sort out the stuff that they want versus stuff that they're not interested in, they sell stuff they're not interested in.

Let's touch a bit on the Central Basin platform. For those -- since we don't have a map up, from a geography standpoint, the Permian Basin basically has 4 areas or 4 main areas: the Midland Basin on the East; the Delaware Basin on the West; the Central Basin Platform, which essentially splits those 2 basins; and the Northwest Shelf, where your horizontal San Andres play is located kind of in the Northern or Northwest part of the basin. Ring acquired assets, as you mentioned, from Stronghold and from Founders in the Central Basin Platform. The Founders deal in the third quarter of '23 was about a $75 million transaction and added an area, I think you all referred to in your maps called the PennWell area in Ector County, Texas. That area is about 90% oil, which is oilier than your pre-Founders asset base in the Central Basin Platform. How did that asset addition play into your capital plans as you thought about the full year '24 allocation?

Yes. Those are -- and all of that is true. I will say that the assets that we acquired from Founders in the Ector County area, the existing production was really about 85% oil, but the remaining undrilled locations are at about that 90% oil and so that factors in quite a bit. Natural gas prices, as you know, have been -- have receded here in recent times. And from our perspective and with all the infrastructure issues in the Central Basin Platform, Northwest Shelf and in the Permian Basin in general, differentials from Henry Hub have been high. And so not much of our revenue comes from natural gas. And so we're very focused on oil and so that's where the Founders assets really shine because with 90% oil that factors significantly. So does the impact of Ring's capital allocation plan for 2024, yes, it does. Now that we've integrated assets into our operations we've made significant strides reducing our operating costs and all but eliminated the infrastructure limitations, not all, we intend to be really active there this year, a significant portion of our vertical well drilling program -- capital program will be spent on the Founders assets this year.

It sounds from what you said on your most recent earnings call that some of the initial results on those wells since Ring took over operations have performed very well versus expectations and very well, I think as you -- as Ring highlighted compared to some of the other vertical wells that have been drilled in that vicinity. Is Ring doing something different with its drilling and completion techniques and some of the surface operational things you can do to maximize production? Or do you think it's a sweet spot? Or is it some sort of combination of new eyes looking at an asset and figuring out ways to make it perform better?

Yes, it's new eyes. It could be sweet spots. But since our earnings call, we brought on a few more wells that we didn't have the notion on in terms of how they're going to perform. And so far, all of our wells drilled there are exceeding our expectations. Now I'm not going to say that it's always going to be the case because now that we're seeing firsthand the implementation and the results of the ideas my team had brought that changed things. So let's talk about some of the things we've done differently. When we first evaluated those assets and we looked at the cost at the previous operators were drilling the wells, well, they were drilling the wells for $2.4 million, $2.6 million. We looked at that and we said, we can change the way the wells are drilled, and we'll reduce the cost. And in our estimates, we were in the $2.1 million range, which we thought was a very handsome reduction in capital costs. Well, this year, as a result of some of the pull back in terms of some of the inflationary pressures, plus also the benefit of my drilling team, I mean they're incredible, associated with organizing the logistics and making sure things arrive just on time, our first few wells out there are at $1.7 million to $1.8 million range. So the capital cost is considerably less. Then the team really got focused on the completion practices and how to complete these wells. And so they've also -- I think this is what's leading to the additional performance. And so we have changed the completion formula, if you want to call that, just a little bit because of the things we've already tried on the Stronghold assets, so we've learned how to complete some of these intervals and so it's made a significant difference. And so yes, we're really excited about it. So it takes time to get all these ideas of blending what works in the areas then try them. Once you find something that works, then you have to identify all the areas or the projects to apply the idea to, right? So we've talked about some of the things already in the past, not on this call, but they're all worth mentioning. We're moving our water disposal off lease. We're lowering pumps to increase producing rates and shallowing out the declines. We've had incredible results in terms of just increasing the production from the base production that we acquired by doing these types of things. And as you know, since I've been here with this company, we've been laser-focused on CTRs. They've always been a focus of ours and an aggressive CTR program works in the Founders assets now that we are reducing the water producing rates by moving some of that water off lease. Another thing is evaluating the well failures and figuring out ways to reduce the well failure rates. The production engineers that are responsible for this area have been focused on all kinds of ways of reducing those mechanical failures, either looking at it from mechanical means or through change in the chemical programs or all the various small blocking and tackling things that they're doing, all of this has led to improved operations. All these small changes combined, they just -- they add up to considerable improvements in field level efficiency. And to be honest with you, at this point, I'd just like to say hats off to my team managing the Founders asset because they've done a great job. They've got -- there's great leadership there, there's great engineering and there's a great operating team. And so all of that together really led to really good operations.

Paul, Ring's fourth quarter production for 2023 was at a record level. And does some of that work you all -- that the company has been able to accomplish on Founders and on Stronghold, is that essentially adding production that's very, very low cost compared to just relying on new drilling -- or drilling new wells to add production?

Absolutely. The most cost-effective production you can bring on basically is the blocking and tackling type of thing. I remember listening to my operating team talk about one of the very first steps they did outside of getting their arms on the saltwater disposal, they noticed that many of the wells had their pumps set at a certain level because they were managing so much water, right? So they lowered the pumps on many of these wells, on the first few wells, and the results were incredible. And then they started to climb and they're still not done. You can only do so many at a time, you go from well to well after you evaluate them. But that's just been -- just really, really effective, very cost-effective way to add production for very little capital.

The Stronghold and Founders now represent, I think, about 60% of fourth quarter '23 production. We've talked about those assets and some of the infrastructure issues and some of the return characteristics. But as you look at those assets and Ring's Northwest Shelf horizontal San Andres, how do you balance those 2 areas when you think about cycle times, capital allocation, infrastructure issues that allow you to -- that may dictate a pace of activity?

Yes. The most significant thing that occurred with both of these acquisitions and now I remember, we spent a lot of time talking about Stronghold that it provided a considerable amount of flexibility. The horizontal wells in Northwest Shelf cost more and they take more time to drill and complete and get online. But the economics of the entire portfolio is very similar, okay? So it gives us a lot of flexibility where we go. So the vertical wells in the CBP specifically help us out when we are up against infrastructure issues in our horizontal program in the Northwest Shelf and the northern portion of our CBP because we're also drilling horizontal -- San Andres horizontal wells there as well. The vertical wells usually do not come on as high a producing rate but their the quick cycle time, the ability to bring on more wells in a shorter period of time provide that flexibility to meet our adjusted free cash flow generation needs, pay down debt. And so that's been a really, really nice component. The return characteristics are all competitive and so it allows us to maximize that free cash flow generation, which, like I said, is our primary goal of paying down debt.

2024 capital budget is about $135 million to $175 million and is really designed to maintain or slightly grow production and also is designed to maintain operational flexibility with the way Ring has structured its rig contracts this year. I think last year, Ring reinvested about 75% of discretionary cash flow into the asset base. You have an inventory that you counted about 450 or more gross development exploitation and projects across the asset base, including the Southern CBP and the Northwest Shelf. How does your current project inventory -- or does that play a role into how quickly you want to develop it and where you allocate cash or capital?

It does. Now if you go back and look at 2023, we invested approximately 64% of our EBITDA to maintain organically our production levels. Our approach to allocating capital between our investment opportunities is focused on, like I said before, maximizing our adjusted free cash flow generation so we can pay down debt. And as we've already discussed in this call, the flexibility of our portfolio provides a considerable amount of flexibility in that regard. Now specifically to your question, how do the current project inventory affect activity levels? The current project inventory does not affect the activity levels as much as it would affect others because we're in a stage where we're really focused on paying down debt. We have more than adequate short and medium-term inventory to meet our activity levels during this time. We are focused on reducing debt. So our activity levels of our organic program are primarily driven by maximizing the adjusted free cash flow levels, not so much as the inventory. And so now I will say this, although we have a handsome short- and medium-term inventory, everybody wanted to have that 15-year plus inventory in a well to drill. We don't have 15-plus years, that long-term goal is why we are consistently pursuing acquisitions to continue to add to that hopper of development opportunities.

Well, there are some companies in the industry that learn the hard way that warehousing capital for the 15th year of inventory sometimes don't really work out all that well...

True.

You all talked on the earnings call about continuous versus phase development. And I think what you really -- is what you really mean maintaining as much flexibility with the capital program to allow Ring to adapt to performance, economic changes and everything that goes on in constructing the capital budget?

Yes, it does. As we've discussed earlier, a continuous drilling program has the ability to outrun your free cash flow depending on oil prices, right? And so if oil prices increase to the point that our adjusted free cash flow exceeds our debt repayment goals, well, that leave us to another decision, right? And that would be whether or not to increase capital spending on organic growth versus paying down additional debt. At the anticipated prices we foresee for 2024, our preference right now is going to be for paying down debt instead of increasing production. But we'll make those decisions as time goes on. So -- and we've been surprised in the past, both upwards and downwards in terms of energy prices. But energy prices have a big impact on the percentage -- and capital spending level what percentage of your EBITDA or your cash flow that will end up being.

On economics, the activity levels in the Permian Basin declined from where they were a year ago just because oil prices up until the last 3 weeks were floating around in the low to mid-70s. And you mentioned gas prices in some places in the Permian Basin, gas prices -- gas production cost money as opposed to being a source of revenue. On an economic question for you on cost, does the type of conventional assets that Ring develops, are you insulated somewhat from some of the inflationary pressures when they are there for rigs and services and the intensity of completing pressure pumping because you have shallow wells, you don't have the same requirements, I guess, to develop your assets versus some of the deeper, unconventional shales.

No, that's right. And so because the deeper depths and the longer lateral lengths of the Delaware and Midland Basins require rigs of greater horsepower, the rigs that we need are not inasmuch competition, okay? So we have not had -- early on in 2021, we were a little concerned because activity started picking up pretty quickly as oil prices came up, especially as you approached the war that occurred between Russia and Ukraine that is still going on. But we haven't had a problem really getting the rigs. Here recently, the pumping services that everybody competes for because of the lower drilling activity and because at a time the service industry built up capacity that they thought was going to continue to increase, currently, today, right now, we're in a situation where that supply and demand is kind of well balanced and so it makes it a lot easier to schedule frac jobs, get things up there on location and get things done. And so again, we're -- our investments are primarily focused on maintaining our production. If we were to step up our organic program to a much higher level that might change. It's all a function of what goes on in the industry, what the demand is in the industry for the types of rigs and services that we need for ours. But the best thing about -- one of the nice things about our program right now is that the types of rigs and services we need are [ enough different ] from the Delaware and Midland Basin that prevents that from being an issue for us.

You mentioned deleveraging and paying down debt several times as we've talked about capital budgeting. And that's really been a core theme of yours and the management team since you took the helm in 2020. Acquisitions have also been a big part of the growth strategy to reposition the asset base to generate sufficient cash flow to both delever the company and really position it for sustainable growth in future years. How do you balance reinvesting in underlying asset base with the Board's deleveraging goals?

Yes. And we've talked about this quite a bit because we're not shy about. Our investments in the underlying asset base are focused on maintaining or slightly growing our production of liquidity with the bank syndicate. That's really important. Liquidity is a key component that leads to a healthy corporate environment in terms of meeting the goals of your shareholders. Once our organic capital program reaches that goal, so to speak, of maintaining or just slightly growing, we'll continue to focus all of our remaining cash flow towards paying down debt. And I don't think that's going to change. Our Board's deleveraging goals, the management team's deleveraging goals, we've all learned that high leverage is not the friend of a commodity-based, capital intense industry like the oil and gas industry. And so we also observe very plainly in the marketplace that those companies that have achieved those lower leverage ratios seem to trade at a premium in the marketplace. And so we'd like to earn that premium and so that's why we're still laser-focused on that. And paying down debt is kind of like [indiscernible] capital return to our shareholders. It's improving the balance sheet and it's making the company more healthy. And so the allocation of our capital, the adjusted free cash flow, the cash flow from operations will feed an organic program to maintain that liquidity, but until our debt gets down to the goals and the levels where we feel more comfortable, we'll continue to focus in that way.

So should we think about acquisitions really as a stepping stone for 2 things. One is to extend the development inventory for -- to sustain the production base but also to step the scale of the company up, as we said earlier, to generate more cash flow and achieve a lot of the goals that you've laid out maybe faster than you could if you weren't out trying to make acquisitions?

That's right. So the strategy of maximizing our free cash flow generation and paying down debt through our organic program and growing through acquisitions, it works very well together as long as you're disciplined, you know exactly what it is that you're seeking and that you don't get excited about the deal. You don't let the deal drive the deal, you let your strategy drive the deals. And so I was talking about what happened on the last couple of ones, Stronghold acquisition is a very good example of structuring the acquisition to improve the balance sheet and reduce our leverage ratio by using a combination of equity and debt in a way to achieve those goals. Now if you look at what we did with Founders, that was a purchase that we did with all debt. And so -- but I think when you consider the price we paid and the size of the deal versus our liquidity and also the fact that it was essentially balance sheet neutral if you don't consider the deferred payment that we made in December, it was a no-brainer. I mean the pro forma company's ability to pay down the debt that we incurred was incredible. And we've already demonstrated that through numbers that we published. But once we get to the point to where that entire debt is paid off, we will have an additional, say, 2,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day or so of production or in that range that will allow us to accelerate pay down afterwards. And so all of this fits together. We haven't lost sight of the fact that our leverage ratio is higher than we'd like. And we also know that we need size and scale. And so this strategy that we're pursuing, it's long, it's tedious than some of ours but it does have the ability to accelerate and we believe that it's in the best interest of our shareholders long term.

If you think about scale, we think about the number of barrels of proved reserves that the company has and the BOEs and production that it has, and therefore, more barrels is just bigger and more acreage. But a lot of what you're talking about is scaling the balance sheet along with scaling the production base to be able to facilitate growth and being able to facilitate larger transactions that maybe increase the size of the step that Ring can take at any one time. Is that really what you're talking about?

It is. And it opens you up to a larger opportunity set when assets do hit the market. Part of the reason why we've been successful is that some of the conventional asset package that hit the street with large enough scale to where a lot of the smaller companies that otherwise would pursue them just don't qualify and they can't get their financing and so that allowed us. So the larger we get that expose us to different forms of financial alternatives and then as you have more alternatives that tends to accelerate your ability to grow. So the larger we get the more financing options we'll qualify for, and we're convinced that it will help us accelerate.

Does that play into the concept that the consolidation market could continue to be quite active over the next couple of years?

I believe that. I know that we're not going to take the foot off the accelerator pedal in terms of pursuing acquisitions. The difference though actually won't be any different. We're going to apply the same level of discipline we've had to each of these deals. We'd rather walk away from an okay deal to get that really good deal. Okay deals, sometimes bring more baggage along than you'd like. There were some of these packages may have more P&A liability than we'd like. So if they're not willing to acknowledge the fact that the cost of that P&A program needs to be built into that acquisition, and they're asking for too much, we will walk away. So discipline is going to be a key component associated with our acquisition-driven growth.

So a big part of that strategy is, in the acquisition, there's always a plan to manage the leverage profile of the combined company and continue to keep it positioned to be opportunistic. So...

Absolutely. And we've -- I've been saying this since day 1, our acquisition pursuits will be, whether it's done with all debt or whether it's done with a combination of debt and equity or once we get to a size and scale to where we qualify for some of these other alternatives, our deals will always be accretive to the existing shareholder because our first alliance and allegiance is to our existing shareholders and will be balance sheet enhancing in one way or another. Now it may be short term slightly higher debt, but when you look at the combined benefit of a really rapid debt pay down situation and the ability to have that ability to pay down debt even faster afterwards that to me is balance sheet enhancing as well. And so we will be very disciplined. Those are the 2 core tenets of our acquisition program, it will be accretive, it will be balance sheet enhancing.

Well, you've talked about positioning Ring for the ultimate goal of being able to return cash to shareholders. As I listen to you talk, is part of what's reflected in that goal, the notion that when you get to that point, Ring will have an asset base that is capable of delivering sufficient free cash flow, you will have met your deleveraging goals and have excess cash that you can then allocate over the best opportunity, including the possibility of returning cash to shareholders. Is that really the message you're trying to send?

It is. As a matter of fact, part of the reason why we really enjoyed these questions because the theme of everything we've talked about all come together into a strategy, okay? So you want an asset base that has a low capital intensity. You only get that because you're managing a portfolio of shallow, declining assets. And today's natural gas prices, you really want that asset to be liquids-rich. You want them to be of low operating cost and then any of the undeveloped opportunities that are associated with that acquisition have competitive economics that have short payout periods and spinoff a lot of free cash flow. And then once they're in that position, again, they have shallow declines, long lives, all of these factors lead into, what I consider, the necessary components to sustainably deliver capital back to your shareholders. And so when I came on board, we had an ideal asset base of these types of assets, but it just wasn't big enough to be sustainable. And then with the balance sheet that we inherited, we knew that we had to fix that balance sheet along the way. And so trying to do all of these things at the same time, it's not an easy task. I'm blessed with an incredible operating and engineering team and strategy team that supports this organization of great assets. And so the goal right now to continue acquiring very similar assets that fit and meet all these criteria, be disciplined, walk away from the deals that don't meet that because you don't want to dilute the portfolio. If you bring in assets that don't compete with your existing assets, it's not doing you any good. You're better off by selling those assets, putting them in the hands with people that value them higher. And so -- but yes, that's part of the reason why I really like the conversation we've had because all of these things we talked about lead into what makes a company sustainably deliver capital returns for their shareholders, which is our ultimate goal.

If you think about your outlook for the rest of 2024, just from maybe a macro and micro company level standpoint and what you see in the industry, how do you think the year shapes up for further progress along that path to the ultimate goal?

Yes, I think we're making incredible progress. I've been very pleased with the reports that have come back from the operating team in terms of our drilling activity, completion activity and also our ongoing operations. My teams have surprised me several times so far this year in terms of the progress we're making. So that's always nice. The unpleasant surprise that you don't like, right, so we're really enjoying that going into the New Year. The activity of these other companies, these larger companies through their acquisition pursuits of the Delaware and Midland Basin, we believe, ultimately, you're going to feed additional assets that we're specifically looking for into the marketplace. Will we be fortunate enough to acquire them? I'm not sure that's going to be the case, but we will be a competitor because we know what we need. We know what grows, what fits our strategy. And so we're going to be very diligent about that. And so we have a future deals that will come in 2024. I believe some are going to hit the market before the end of this year, and we hope to be primed and ready. In the meantime, we are quickly paying off the debt of the last acquisition we made, the Founders deal. And if product prices continue to remain strong like they have up to now then we've had a short period of stability, it'd sure be nice to see the stability to continue on. If we're fortunate to have stability in oil prices and inflationary pressures remain kind of where they are, 2024 could be a remarkable year whether we're successful with acquisitions or not. But if you throw in the potential of growth through acquisitions, like what we've done in the past, that gives us a size and scale and the ability to accelerate and so yes, you could see 2024 being a very pivotal year for us in terms of growth, pivotal. And so yes, really, really excited about 2024 in many regards. And so I guess you've got to be an optimist in this industry because all the curveballs that you are thrown and the volatility that you got to deal with has always been a challenge. But 2024, so far this year is shaping up to be a very good year for us.

I would say you, you wouldn't be in this industry if you weren't an optimist, otherwise you'd never drill or probably own a producing well where an awful lot of things on your control can go wrong...

Well, you're either an optimist or a stupid gambler.

Well, that's to your curveball analogy. And since baseball season starts up here the next couple of days, that's standing in the batter box [indiscernible] plates and getting beaned.

There you go. There you go. So yes, 2024 does have the prospects of being a really good year. We're very, very grateful for the market's reaction to our earnings release on our full year of last year. We have a long way to go. And so we're very competitive. There's a lot of competition out there in the oil and gas industry, and we're seeing that played out with the bigger companies right now. We'll see how things play out with the smaller companies. The good thing about our strategy, we're pursuing conventional assets where we can apply unconventional technology or the technology developed for the unconventional shales and we're pursuing the assets in an area that the rest of the industry doesn't appear to be focused on. So we're not having to pay those large entry fees to get into the Delaware or Midland. We're -- our entry fees are much lower. And so we're passing those rates of return on to our shareholders, and it's really allowing a small company like us to grow very effectively and efficiently. And I believe that it won't be very long before we won't be considering a smaller company. I believe that we can be successful to grow into a very sizable company and be the size and scale in the marketplace to demand more attention from a larger cross-section of the investment community, and that's what we're working to.

It's a great discussion and a great way to wrap up where you think Ring stands for 2024. So we will look forward to checking in with you again in the not-too-distant future for another discussion. So I want to take the time to thank you very much for joining us.

Well, Jeff, thank you for the opportunity, and thank you for Water Tower's interest and desire to put this on. We're excited to do these. And, hey, thank you, and I look forward to the next year.

Very good. Thank you so much.

You bet. And bye for now.