11/19/2024

speaker
Mike Porter
Head of Investor Relations

Yes sir, good afternoon ladies and gentlemen and welcome to our conference call for the third quarter. We will make a presentation and then we will open it up for questions. I gotta get some legal things out of the way first. This call includes forward-looking statements within the meeting of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that involves risk and uncertainties that could cause actual results To differ materially from what is expected, words such as expect, believe, anticipate, intend, estimate, plan, possible, should, and variations in similar words and expressions are not intended to identify such forward-looking statements. But in the absence of these words does not mean that a statement is not forward-looking. The company's expectations are disclosed in the company's document filed from time to time on EDGAR with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Before I turn the call over to Dante, let me just say that any shareholder who has not voted for the upcoming annual meeting, please vote. And if you have any questions, just give me a holler and I will be more than happy to walk you through the whole thing. Dante, good afternoon. The call is yours.

speaker
Dante Caravaggio
President and CEO

Yeah, thank you, Mike. I'm Dante Caravaggio, President and CEO. I'm pleased to be here with each of you. Like most of you, I hope, I'm a shareholder in this company. It's public record how many shares I own. And I just have to start with saying I think we're an incredibly good bargain at this level. And I'm going to start this off with some opening remarks. Encourage all of you to talk to us either through this forum or or send us notes direct, I'll give an overview of the field. I'm going to give you the plan for us to achieve 2,000 barrels a day in 2025. And now that we've been a public company for a year, I'll make a few observations by looking in the rearview mirror. So the first thing I'm going to highlight is Q3 was a good quarter. We had record revenues of $7.4 million and record operating income of $1.9 million. But I'm also going to say most of that delta is due to Mitch's hedging and Jesse's efficient operations, and they're going to go into detail on both. And it's not necessarily a good thing when you make money on hedging because some of that is non-cash. In our case, a lot of it is non-cash, and I just want to be straight with all of you. Looking forward, we have step-changing actions ongoing now to position us for a great 2025. Our key focus being workovers. And our plan in workovers is to do 50 a year and add about 1,000 barrels a day a year. That's going to consume us in 2025 and 2026. We have just started on 300. High potential workovers, Jesse will talk about that. It's part of a 50-well package that will drag much of the way through 2025. And Mitch will discuss recent events that improves our balance sheet and equity position. So with that, I'm going to flip to the oil field. I'm going to review with you some of the particulars of the field, the most exciting part of this field. is that we're in the Permian, we're pure Permian play, and we have a billion barrels of oil under our 14,000 acres. And it's stacked pay, meaning we have multiple zones to perforate and stimulate. So currently we've got roughly 15 million of proven reserves. We published a press release a number of months ago that said we believe there's 50 million. and recoverable reserves, and all the data that we've got since then says that number is low. The zones that are in our mineral rights, which are down to 4,000 feet under those 14,000 acres, include the Yates, the Seven Rivers, the Queen, the Grayburg, and the San Andreas. And you can see those on the right side in the middle of that table on the right side of your screen. of your slide there. Our focus areas are really the Seven Rivers and the San Andreas. We are doing a test in these first three wells in the Yates that we're very interested to see how it goes. We are mostly an oil play. 85% of our revenues comes from oil. We make a little gas. We have 550 wells and we have 95 active water flood patterns. The nice thing about a water flood is that it gives you sustainability of that oil producing rate, meaning you don't get a spike up and a spike down, which is the typical tight curve production decline you get from, I'll say, a normal Permian fracked well. With that, I'm going to move to our path to 2,000 barrels a day. So just leave it on this slide, Amina. The first thing we did since buying the property is infrastructure hardening. We had to replace 14 flow lines, 50 downhole pumps, two expensive horizontal water injection pumps. We did 75 acid jobs, and we did major electrical upgrades. All those things allowed us to, I'll say, be – at a sustainable 1,000 barrels a day, which we're bouncing around. Then we've done a lot of engineering with reservoir engineering and geologists and petrophysicists, and that's to look at these wells and determine what's the best way to develop the field. I hate to mention this, but the way we got those records, it was in 450 different boxes, so it's a little bit of sifting through – for needles in a haystack, but these guys came up with some fantastic revelations. And the end result is we've got 50 workovers ready to go. We're doing three right now. We have an artificial intelligence app in development for the field that will increase our uptime and reduce our lease operating expense. And that's been beta tested. It should be rolled out, we hope, the end of this month. The real secret to the future and to making 2,000 barrels a day is workovers, workovers in the Seven Rivers and San Andreas. And we don't know yet if the Yates is going to be good or not, but we're testing it. These workovers from all of our engineering work tell us they'll do 35 barrels a day each at a cost of $150,000 each. and that's about half what our predecessor owner was spending. And the capex per year we're going to need is around $7.5 million per year to generate this additional 1,000 barrels a day of sustainable production. So that's really our business plan for 2025. 2026 is going to look much the same with a little bit of drilling, and we're starting now to look at drilling locations. We are a water flood, but we do rely upon fracturing. And so we're not really looking in 25 to do drill, baby, drill. It's low-cost work over, baby, low-cost work over, baby. So that would be our theme in 25. However, in 26, I won't say that we won't move toward a drill, baby, drill scenario, but drilling is very expensive. A vertical well is about $1 million. A horizontal well is about $3 million. And then these workovers, as I mentioned, are $150,000. So we're going to go with this thing kind of slow and low cost to get there. With that, I'm going to turn it over to Mitch.

speaker
Mitch Trotter
Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Dante. Hello, I'm Mitch Trotter. I'm the CFO. We have talked to many of you on these past earnings calls and on individual basis. So I want to thank you all for attending today. In this call, I will be giving insights into the Q3 results and all the operations. And then later, I'll turn it over to Jesse to drill down into operations. Before I get into the presentation and the slides, I first want to say the accounting team and the auditors did a really good job of getting the 10Q ready, and they were actually ready to file early. But we decided to delay by a day, and that was for a good reason, a pending subsequent event. And that's where we settled with the FPA provider. And the details are disclosed in the 10Q subsequent event, so you'd have it. But just a few highlights is it removes the potential, future potential of 3 million shares. It removes a 5.6 million liability that's on the balance sheet. Now that goes away at the end of the year. And the provider did receive some restricted shares, so they really can't sell them or anything for a good six months. So when I get into the deck, I will hit the top side results. I will go to the revenue and non-cash expenses and then equity and debt structures, all similar to what I've done in the past. But if you need a deeper dive, please reach out to Mike Porter and he'll schedule a one-on-one. Many of y'all have done that in the past. So with that, I want to go to the slide on income summary, statement summary. So a couple items in this slide before we just drill it down into more into the revenues and non-cash item. But most notably, and Dante alluded to that, we will break even at the operating income after corporate G&A, excluding the non-cash hedging derivatives we'll talk about in a minute, for the first time. The first two quarters from day one, we've always had positive earnings from the field but never enough to cover the corporate G&A until this quarter. So that's good news. We had said that in the past, we would get there and we did. Now, G&A cost, they dropped 30K a month. We're running now at 745 a month. And our typical G&A is very similar to a public company. Now, 45% are employee related. 35% relates to professional fees. 15% to insurance, and 5% other. The other major line item is lease operating expenses, which averaged $765,000 per month back in Q1. But for the last six months, we've been running at a very good level of $700K per month. This is what we expect to sustain in the short term. And we are focused on, Jesse especially, to driving it down to $650K a month. And that'll be over the midterm. And that is a sustainable level with some development. Now the long term, the LOE will be driven up proportionally related to the future development of the field. So we're in really good shape, I think, with the LOE.

speaker
Jesse

So next slide on the revenues, please.

speaker
Mitch Trotter
Chief Financial Officer

Now the revenues, without the non-cash hedging, is five million plus a quarter, and we've been consistently doing that. The oil production, gas and production, which Jesse and the field team stabilized, has remained fairly constant. In Q3, the oil prices popped up about average of $4 across Q3 from the past, so you'll see that's the highest revenue, cash revenues we've had. But the hedging impact, I need to drill down a little bit into that. It goes up and down. It's non-cash. The Q1, if you all remember, was a $2 million hit. And that's because oil prices increased from $72 at the beginning of the quarter to $83 at the end. And then Q2 was flat because oil stayed pretty much the same price at the beginning and the end. Now Q3 is we get the huge pickup of the 2 million range, 1.9, because oil prices went down to $70 at the end of September, September 30th. So as I've said in the past, non-cash impact looks bad when prices increase, but it looks good when oil prices drop, which is opposite of where you want the cash to be. But with that, If oil prices drop dramatically from where they are, which is running in the 70 range, plus or minus its time, we are responsibly hedged to protect the company from a cash perspective. We have 70% hedged and all over $70 that go through the end of 2025. So we think we're in the proper position there. Now I'd like to flip forward on the slide to the non-cash expenses and drill down a little bit into that. I do this every quarter, so you get a better understanding of our financials. The numbers on the right have every quarter, just like there in the 10Qs, and I gave you six reference numbers. First one, hedging derivative, we've already discussed. The second one, G&A, by quarter, buried in down there is non-cash expenses relating to payments in stock. And by quarter, the expense was $574, $360, and $260, respectively, over the three quarters. And these are all on existing type agreements. And the payments enhance the company's cash position and our balance sheet position. So it's good that it's in there. It's a hit. But it's not clear. You can't see it. And then when you get down to below the line, you can see about everything else. The warrant liability is the same as before. um it just goes up and down by price the forward purchase agreement number four as i mentioned earlier and so did dante we terminated the agreement so all of this everything reverses back out in q4 and the non-cash impact will flow through q4 from the removal of the 5.6 from the balance sheet and then the last ones The financing cost amortization, that's the same as before. It's all from the financing acquisition back November a year ago. And the gain from extinguishment of liabilities, that was a Q2 event. So I'm not going to go into that. With that, let's go forward to the equity slide, please. And I'll just hit on a couple things real quick. Of course, equity is always an interest to this group. The common stock at the end of the quarter was 7.0 million Class A shares and 1.4 million Class B shares. Now, the Class B, pretty much the same except for no economic rights, voting rights only. They convert at any time one for one to Class A. So I mentioned them in the same pile. Preferred stock, no real change. There's really none at the parent company level, but we talk about them because there is at the subsidiary level. There's the same 15 million preferred units, which is buried in the minority interest line of the balance sheet. So you don't see it. But everything else is as it was. Warrants, still no change from the past. It's basically everything exercises at $11.50. And we're not positioned, obviously, for people to be exercising on. But let's flip to the debt slide. And really, again, there's not a whole lot different than we've talked about in the past. The only change is the RBL continues to be paid down based on the amortization schedule, and we're now at $25 million from the original $28. And the seller note private loans, they're all the same that we've discussed before, and they've been on the balance sheet for a while. So with that, I'd like to hand it off to Jesse Allen to go through the operations overview.

speaker
Jesse Allen
VP of Operations

Yes, thank you, Mitch. Good afternoon. This is Jesse Allen. I'm VP of Operations for LH Operating. And today what I'm going to talk about, I'll talk a little bit about safety. I'll talk a little bit about our actions to increase production. And then, of course, our actions to reduce costs. They all work in tandem together. So first on safety there. Since we've taken over operations back in November of 2023, we've had no reportable incidents. Our field operations team is focused on working safely. And I've always told them that I want you to come to work in the morning safely and then work all day safely and then go home and be at home at night in safety. So there is a focus on safety.

speaker
Jesse Allen

Let's go to that next slide, please. So actions to increase production.

speaker
Jesse Allen
VP of Operations

With my team, reservoir engineer and well log analyst, petrophysicist, and of course myself, we're following the science to analyze all our producing wells. And so what does that mean? That means, as Dante alluded to, we went into the old paper files, and there's a wealth of data and information in there that we were able to take advantage of. And then our petrophysicist really tremendous well log analyst, has done a lot of work in the Permian Basin, understands the Permian Basin and the petrophysics there. And so as a result, we've got a real advantage there in the analysis of our wells. And also as Dante had mentioned, we have just started three workovers, three workovers that were a result of all this work. And so hopefully by, the end of this month here, we'll have those wells on test and have some really positive results to report. And also as part of this analysis, we ended up identifying some stringers within the seven rivers that were not included in the original Cobb Reservoir report. So that's another very positive item that at the end of the day, once we do the testing, will increase our reserves. On top of that, we have done some chemical slash acid treatments on some of our wells that have had some positive results, and we'll continue to do that. We're cleaning up near-wellbore damage, maybe some scale, calcium carbonate scale, other oilfield scales that result, and then even changing wettability near-wellbore with some chemicals that also help increase the rate of production from each of the wells that are treated. We do continue to do an upgrade on our infrastructure, which means replacing some flow lines that were in need of repair. Also, additional upgrades on our water injection facilities. We've replaced several of our horizontal pumps that we use to inject water in the water flood. We've done some electrical upgrades. that help keep our wells on production. We upgraded several transformers, one especially on one of the water stations that did not allow us to inject water at capacity, which we are now doing. Further, here in the not too distant future, we'll begin doing that workover program. Three that we've started. There's an additional 45 to 50 that we have in the queue and we'll begin to start doing those once we get some results on this first three. And then further along, we will start concentrating our efforts on the water flood, analyzing our injection wells and starting to convert old legacy injection wells to the Seven Rivers water flood. So that's kind of our second wave of analysis that myself, our reservoir engineer and our well log analyst petrophysicist will start to do. Let's go to the next slide, please. Finally, as part of our efforts to improve profitability, which we've had several press releases concerning just that, as I've mentioned, we've upgraded flow lines, returned some wells to production that had been off, and in doing so, we reduced some of our operating expense by about $30,000 per month, and what that really entails is If we've got good, competent flow lines with integrity, then you don't have resulting spills that require cleanup. So that's where the improved OPEX comes from, our improved operating expense. And then in conjunction with being able to do all these workovers, we want to be able to test these wells. And so we've upgraded our satellite test stations, changed back pressure valves where needed, made sure valves were operating correctly. And then, as I've mentioned in a previous quarter, we bought some portable well test units that we can move to individual wells. That'll help us in analyzing just how the profitability that we're seeing from the work that we're doing. And Dante did mention our AI app that we'll be initiating that will help our lease operators be much more efficient in their daily routine. We actually have the team coming out the first week in December to initiate that app, which each of our lease operators will then begin to use. And finally, we've been able to internalize equipment. As an example is the hot oil unit that we purchased there in the second quarter, and In and of itself, we reduce our operating expense about $10,000 to $30,000 per month. Instead of third-partying that, we now have our own hot oil unit and our operator for that hot oil unit. Finally, as a result of all the work, the science that we've been following, we've been able to reduce our work over cost in the range of $75,000 to $100,000 over the work that was being done previously. That can only improve our economics and only improve, at the end of the day, our profitability. So with that, I turn it back over to Mike Porter for some Q&A and to entertain all your questions.

speaker
Jesse Allen

Thank you for your time. Mike?

speaker
spk08

This is Mitch.

speaker
Mitch Trotter
Chief Financial Officer

I see some questions on the website, so I'm just going to answer a couple of those that are obviously mine. The first one is from Sandy. Explain why hedging is non-cash. Most of the hedging is non-cash. There's obviously some each month where we either owe the hedging company a little bit because it's outside of the hedged amount, and sometimes it's below and they cut us a check. And that settled up right away. But the majority of it is based on the derivative pricing gap where they take oil price at the day of the close of the quarter and then take it against our hedging numbers all the way through the end of the hedge, so the various monthly hedges, which go all the way to 2025, and calculate is if for some reason everything was, they decided to, we decided to terminate all our hedging agreements, that's what we owe the hedging company. So it's a non-cash, expense and the predominance of these numbers. I personally would like to be able to split it between the cash portion and the non-cash portion so you could see it, but the GAAP, the SEC, consistently all driven by the big four say, no, you have to lump it. So hopefully that answers your question. And then I'm going to see if... Mike's on. Let's take it back over.

speaker
Mike Porter
Head of Investor Relations

Yeah, Mitch. The next question is, what is the company's plan to decrease operating costs? Okay.

speaker
Mitch Trotter
Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, let me... I was going to say, let Jesse or Dante go.

speaker
Dante Caravaggio
President and CEO

Yeah, let me try to... You know, when we got the thing, the operating costs, frankly, surprised us, and it had to be our top priority. So we spent... In 24, almost 3 million working just on that. And to bring down the cost, the AI initiative could reduce the number of folks required in the field. And the way it works is, you know, you get an alert that this well is down versus driving up and down across the field to find which well is down. So, you know, right now we think even without you know say reducing force we we save money because we're increasing the uptime that's the ai contribution the hot oiler machine we just had wells down and couldn't get a hot oiler out there so if you buy the machine and hire the operator now you can keep those wells on so that's another one and um you know there were so many lines out there that were leaking You know, you end up with a double whammy. If you have a spill, you have to clean up the spill. You have to report the spill. So we invested in replacing flow lines that had a history of leaking. And you had to solve that. Then you had pumps that were breaking down. We did some experimentation about what's the best pump to put down hole and what's the best pump and sizing to inject water. So we're now a year later and $3 million afterward, and our lease operating expenses is getting close to an acceptable range, but we're not done yet. Jesse, do you want to add anything to that?

speaker
Jesse Allen
VP of Operations

Dante, you did a great job, and I think part of that is that we've got very experienced field operations folks that are very focused on keeping our expenses down and monitoring what's going on with our wells. So that's part of it too, is just paying more attention to your wells and having a little more focus on keeping them on production.

speaker
Mike Porter
Head of Investor Relations

Mitch, I have two equity questions. The first is, can you explain what is going on with the 424B3 filings with the additional shares and warrants that are now showing up as of the third quarter? Part B is, Let's see, I believe 9.3 move Class A shares and 0.5 Class B shares outstanding as per the 10Q from 9.30.

speaker
Mitch Trotter
Chief Financial Officer

Let me take the first one. Okay, I see the second one. Let me answer one at a time here. First off, the follow-on S-1 registration was always planned. And in the 1.8 actually has the significant number of those shares were already included in the – but we had to register, I believe. There's a big chunk that's relating to settlements paid in shares. We also paid a lot of payables in shares. So that was non-cash. that then in turn improved our balance sheet and reducing our payables. Same thing with the 1.2 million warrants. It was solely for our largest payable vendor supplier where we did that to be able to eliminate a significant payable from our books. and we may pay in cash and not use it. So that's there as a backstop.

speaker
spk08

It sounds like you, I believe.

speaker
Mitch Trotter
Chief Financial Officer

Okay, yes, after the primary difference in the second question is, and the question is I believe there's 4.3 million shares and 500,000 shares of Class B. outstanding as of the 15th. And the reason for the difference is I'd said that the class A's and B's could be converted to common to A's. So the million four class B's, 900,000 were flipped into the A category. So that's why you see that. And part of the other is some of the luck usage, which is already embedded in the numbers, and some of the other shares I've already discussed. So I will go back to you. I don't know if you've got any on the call line, but I'll give it to you.

speaker
Mike Porter
Head of Investor Relations

Okay. Can you discuss financial costs and sources of funds and possibly extent of equity dilution to Can you summarize both positive and negative surprise since the acquisition closed? And what major concerns going forward on oil prices do you take in order to break even and price assumption for your 25 and 26 planning? And then he said, congratulations on your progress.

speaker
Mitch Trotter
Chief Financial Officer

Okay. Three questions in there. The financing cost. and sources of fund. Well, the financing costs, the amortization comes from the cost of closing, the financing cost for the RBL and everything else back in November. So that's the financing cost. The sources of funds is, as we've always planned, we have the use of our common stock purchase agreement, which is all registered, and we use that at a very low level so it doesn't have a huge impact on our equity dilution. We do use, as stated before, some of our equity to pay down payables or protect our payables position. And then we are always looking at sources of funds from one of three categories, debt, equity and, uh, production sharing. And, you know, and each one have their pluses and minuses, uh, and we take our time and evaluate it. Um, you know, it's always a balancing act. We've, you know, like for equity dilution of possible amounts, we were, we're, we're being responsible in the levels in which we're doing it. Uh, and the same thing with debt and the other. So it's, uh, You know, we go into each one. We have long discussions, and we'll deal with that, each one, as they come up. But everything has got the investor in mind, the company in mind, and obviously their shareholders. So when we make those decisions, we do it in the best interest for all stakeholders the best we can.

speaker
Mike Porter
Head of Investor Relations

Next question is, what are your plans to maximize revenues and increased revenue streams?

speaker
Dante Caravaggio
President and CEO

Well, it's production. Go ahead, Dante. Yeah, I'll mention that. Our mission is not to borrow money, not to raise it in equity, and not to production share if we can. The problem is we need to get the production of the field up to at least 1,500 to generate enough free cash flow to probably do what we wish. So near term, until I think we hit 2,000 barrels a day, we like the option of production sharing. So it doesn't dilute the stock. It doesn't increase the debt, but we, we want to get that kind of financing without a perpetual override, you know, attached to it. And so we've, we found a few parties that are interested in doing that. So the plan is, you know, right now, as you mentioned, we, we, we want to do 50 workovers a year at, at, uh, 150,000 barrels a day, $150,000 each, making between 30 and 50 barrels a day. And if you run the math, 50 times 50 is a lot. And we think we can hit 1,000. We think we can hit 1,000 barrels a day in a sustained way and then do it again in 26. So 25 is lining up pretty good. The engineering's caught up. We struggled to get all the data together and go through it. And our office in Houston is filled with logs on the wall and maps. And we're actually doing the science that I'd say is comparable to a billion dollar company. And yet we're a very small cap company. But the skill set of our reservoir and geologists are tremendous. So anyway, we've got a backlog of workovers to do. As those workovers run dry, which would take us into 27, we have to look at new wells to drill. And we're at 40-acre spacing. If we went down to 10 or 20-acre spacing, we could double the well count. If we went to horizontal wells, we figure we've got 100 of those we could do. But those are 3 million each. And we don't have really the desire to raise $300 million right now, but we may dabble and raise $10 million to do a three-well package, and we're looking at that. So right now the plan, to answer your question succinctly, is increase 1,000 barrels a day in 2025 and another 1,000 barrels a day in 2026. Now let me go to Jesse and see if he wants to add something to that.

speaker
Jesse Allen
VP of Operations

Not really, Dante. You're doing a tremendous job of recapping. And, of course, you and I stay in such close contact. What comes out of your mouth basically comes out of my mouth, and what comes out of my mouth comes out of your mouth. So, yeah, we're both on the same page in that regard.

speaker
Dante Caravaggio
President and CEO

I mean, we're a small team. We're a small company. Jesse and I really do talk five, six times a day. And, you know, he lives an hour and a half from the field. and we're blessed that he's, you know, not too many people live in Eddy County, New Mexico, but he keeps his sanity by going over there to Texas Tech football games.

speaker
Mike Porter
Head of Investor Relations

Mitch, let me ask you the next question. The question is, it seems like salaries are very low. Are employees all full-time employees?

speaker
Mitch Trotter
Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, okay. So first I'll thank them for asking the question with the chairman on the board, telling them that our salaries are low. But we only have five employees that are not in the field. The field employees are in the LOE, the lease operating expenses, and they are charged there, and that's actually a balance of full-time employees, and contract employees, depending on the tasks. But we've structured ourselves, and we've all, five of us, have salaries that are lower than we've done in the past, but is commensurate with what we want to gain in the long term. And we are into building up an infrastructure, a great big overhead structure. So we've got an excellent accounting firm, that does all our record keeping and our reserve stuff and everything else and Petroledger. And we use various legal groups and everything else. And consultants, these high-end consultants that Jesse talks about, they're on a consulting basis. And so we're not building permanent infrastructure. That's the purpose of how we've structured it. And I see the other question. I'm just going to answer that, Mike. Somebody asked, what's the FPA mean? It's called a forward purchase agreement. And that is where a provider would buy stock after the redemption period is in place. So it's forward purchase agreement and where they would buy it and hold them so that we could tap into those shares immediately after the close to generate cash under certain requirements and then the second half of that is where they could actually buy shares in the future under the agreement but it's not quite the same because it's much longer term really didn't end up having the shares at close that we wanted to, and only the $3 billion trailing. And that's what we got rid of. The $3 million trailing doesn't help us, and it certainly doesn't help investor base. So that's what the poor purchase agreement is like. So I'll go back to you, Mike.

speaker
Mike Porter
Head of Investor Relations

Okay. I have just two more questions, and then we'll go to the phone. How do you foresee the automatic conversion of preferred units impacting shareholder equity in the near future?

speaker
Mitch Trotter
Chief Financial Officer

Well, it won't be the near future. It would be, um, in, uh, just right at a year from now. So, and it's all based on, it's, it's automatic conversion based on stock price at the time. There is no cash requirement to the company. That doesn't mean we don't have the ability to buy it back at some price, uh, in between now and then. But, um, So there isn't a near-term impact whatsoever. It's a year out.

speaker
Mike Porter
Head of Investor Relations

And the last part of it is, are there plans to diversify the asset base or invest in alternative energy resources to mitigate future risk?

speaker
Mitch Trotter
Chief Financial Officer

Well, we are a public company, not just for this property. And the long-term, because it We have an infrastructure, but we're not building an infrastructure, but we have a cost structure that's a public company so that we can grow the company. We've always said it every... And we keep having people bring stuff to the tables. Hey, are you interested in buying? We look at a lot of deals. Yeah, we will diversify. We're an energy company. Obviously, our current sweet spot and being able to bolt on is in the... in the Permian Basin. But we will look at other different types of energy to eventually diversify the company, but not through this one property. And Dante, did you want to add to that at all?

speaker
Dante Caravaggio
President and CEO

Well, I guess, you know, there's a lot of things going on. Our gas, we get next to nothing for the gas when we sell it. So there's options to, some people do Bitcoin mining with their gas. So there's also lithium in our water. The problem with all those things, they take energy from the management team to bracket it up. It always sounds nice at the beginning, and then it just gets into a maze of details. So our focus really is cut our costs, improve the balance sheet, improve the earnings, and we get to a spot where you know, frankly, we can relax a little bit, and we're not going to be relaxed until we're above 1,500 barrels a day. So then we could look at those other things in earnest, but they're coming across all the time. We're watching our offset operator competitors, what they're doing. Some are doing compressed gas and then trucking it. That's a novel idea. Anything you can do to realize a better margin from the gas is really a lot of opportunity there. We do make a little bit of money handling water for our neighbors because we're a water flood and others dispose of it or just need to do something with it. We're trying to get a production kick by injecting water and We're probably at about the capacity that we can handle, so there's not a lot more room there. But we recycle the water, and we also have in the plans at some point to maybe do a little bit of solar to generate power that way. But I think that the most profitable alternative energy source for us is something – that we do with the gas, like generate power and use the power to run the field or to run a great computer to look for Bitcoin, especially since the new administration wants to make America Bitcoin center.

speaker
Mike Porter
Head of Investor Relations

Okay. Mitch, one more question came in. The question is, I get BPD improved sequentially from 718 to 854, but just to compare to this 1.4K gross BPD target number for sometime in 25, where are we on a gross BPD in the third quarter? Has this changed from the end of the quarter to today? What's the target for the fourth quarter?

speaker
Dante Caravaggio
President and CEO

Yeah.

speaker
Mike Porter
Head of Investor Relations

So let me break down.

speaker
Mitch Trotter
Chief Financial Officer

Go ahead, Dante.

speaker
Dante Caravaggio
President and CEO

Yeah. Yeah. The acronyms are barrel per day. So the person's, the person's asking barrels of oil per day and we're, we're behind where we hope we wanted to be. We wanted to finish the year at really 1250 minimum 1400 in that range, 1250 to 1400. And, uh, we, for a while we thought the acid jobs we were doing, we're going to lift us, you know, into that range. And, uh, The only way I can say it is we got overzealous. We had tremendous success doing six acid jobs a week. And then we went to 25 a week. And we got so much sediment and paraffin and things breaking loose out of the well that we had to stop that. And we'll resume that. But I think we're a quarter behind in hitting the targets that we set for ourselves earlier in the year. So... I'm not exactly clear on the questions, but I think the answer is the same. We want to finish next year at 2,000. We want to get to 1,250 as quick as we can. It's not impossible for this year. We're hanging our hat on a lot to help these workovers go. And then, of course, we have to fund this. So when we have a good story, it makes it easier to raise the

speaker
Mitch Trotter
Chief Financial Officer

capital needed to do this so I think I think that's my rambling for that yeah let me add just also part of the question Dante is where were we in q3 we pretty much were right at a thousand or just below in gross per day and I think since then we've hit up a little bit upwards as high as 1100 but sustaining I think just now, just over 1,000, but I'm not 100% certain Jesse can answer that.

speaker
Dante Caravaggio
President and CEO

Yeah, I think the question was using net numbers, Mitch.

speaker
Mitch Trotter
Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, but then he switched to gross. They switched to gross. Oh, fair enough, fair enough. Yeah, because that's how we report. So anyway, that's where we are, and it all relates to what Bob did. So back to you, Mike.

speaker
Mike Porter
Head of Investor Relations

Okay, thank you. Amina, just to make sure that there are no other questions left, On the telephone, hit star five and we'll get you plugged in right away. So anybody who has any other questions, just hit star five on your phone.

speaker
Amina

All right, we are waiting to see if there are any questions via the phone. Again, please dial star five to ask a question. We'll pause for a moment now to allow the audience the opportunity to press star five on their phone.

speaker
spk08

Amina, there just aren't any.

speaker
Amina

There are not. No, there are no questions. We have a telephone line.

speaker
Dante Caravaggio
President and CEO

So maybe we could do a wrap. Can I do a couple statements on a wrap? And, of course, if somebody wants to start by us, I'll stop and they can chime in?

speaker
Amina

Yes, I'll let you know. Absolutely.

speaker
Dante Caravaggio
President and CEO

Okay. I've got four bullets here for our listeners. And, you know, number one, we appreciate the folks that are riding with us. We know it's been a bumpy ride on the stock price, and all of us in the management team are shareholders, so we don't like it. The way I view it is the shareholders are going to make us fight and earn it, so we are doing our best to cut costs, increase production, and I have faith that the markets will reward us. But I think to show very good numbers is going to be in Q1 and Q2, so I was hoping we would have a stunning year.

speaker
Amina

q4 but i i think it's going to slip on us to q1 um this sorry dante we did receive a question via the telephone line okay there we go fire it off so caller whose phone number ends in zero nine eight five please say your name and your company and proceed with your question hi everyone it's jesse sobelson i'm with d borough capital

speaker
Jesse

Pleasure to be on the call with you guys and thanks for taking my questions. I am curious on the operational point here. You know, it's understandable that, you know, as you guys are investing in this business and learning the assets, that there's a little volatility in where the targets are going to be. And I do think that there's some definitive upside from an operational standpoint once things get going, you know, regardless of the timeline here. I am curious, you know, we talked about maybe greater than 2,000 barrels per oil by maybe the end of next year. I know we're getting a little bit ahead of our skis here with maybe getting to that 1,250 to 1,400 numbers sometime in 2025. Is the 2,000 still on the table for the end of next year, or is that something that we might need to look out to 2026 for?

speaker
Dante Caravaggio
President and CEO

No, no, that's the number. That's the number for 2025. These 50 workovers that we have now engineered and we're in the midst of funding, they should get us there. They should get us there. And we're also refining how we do these acid jobs. Like I said, we had a mixed bag. You know, the first 25 or so got us 100-plus barrels a day, and the next 50 didn't get us much. So we're still going through that data to make sure we get it just right. But I think it's within reach, easy to say December of 25, we're north of 2,000 barrels a day. The water injection will be going. More patterns will be completed. And you'll have a glimpse of this, as Jesse said, I hope early next month as we report on how these first three went. Because these are representative, I think, of how the next 50 will go.

speaker
Jesse

Yeah, it definitely sounds like there's some overzealousness with the asset jobs because the workovers are a clearer potential for upside to benefit the PPT number in the medium term here.

speaker
Dante Caravaggio
President and CEO

We agree.

speaker
Jesse

Great. Thanks for taking my question.

speaker
Dante Caravaggio
President and CEO

Okay. Any more? If there's not any more, this dovetails into the theme of 25 and 26 is low-cost workover, baby, low-cost workovers. You know, we're not really focused on drilling, although we have to plan. And frankly, we're going to take advantage of the new administration to try to permit 100, maybe even 200 wells, because, you know, that could sail through, especially where 80 percent of our leases are BLM. So you've got a frat king in there as the energy secretary under Trump. We might as well get all this stuff on the on the board. So that's going to really be something. But near term, we're not going there, but we're preparing for it. The business plan for 25 is going to be mostly the same as 26. I think it'll be markedly different in 27 as we prove out whether more vertical or more horizontal wells do good. Now, I think we're going to have a few. you know, maybe three or four wells in 25 horizontally and vertically, you know, maybe up to 10. And then that'll shape our development plan in years forward. But right now it's easy to say, do workovers. We're going to take advantage of the 550 wellbores. They're just already there. We already bought them. You know, that's pretty much it. I mean, I'm thrilled with the team, and I'm not so thrilled about this stock price thing. But like I said, I think the shareholders are going to make us work for it. We understand the impacts of dilution. We're doing everything we can to make sure all the moves we do don't hurt us. And as far as debt, we don't like debt either. We think right now near term the best way to go is by doing profit sharing where somebody gets a prescribed dollar on dollar return with no perpetual override remaining so that we regain 100% of all revenues. So that's kind of it from me. Unless there's more comments, I'll turn it back over to Mike and Amina.

speaker
Mike Porter
Head of Investor Relations

Let me just thank everybody for being on the call. If you have any other questions, you can contact me at any time. And enjoy your afternoon. Thank you very much. Bye bye. Thanks, everybody.

Disclaimer

This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.

-

-