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.
spk09: Good day and welcome to the Ring Energy Third Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touchtone phone. And to withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Al Petrie of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.
spk04: Thank you, Chuck, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate your interest in Ring Energy. We'll begin our call with comments from Paul McKinney, our chairman and CEO, who will provide an overview of key matters for the third quarter. We will then turn the call over to Travis Thomas, Ring's Chief Financial Officer, who will review our financial results. Paul will then return to discuss our future plans and outlook before we open the call for questions. Also joining us on the call today and available for Q&A during our Q&A session are Alex Dias, Executive Vice President of Engineering and Corporate Strategy, Marinos Baghdadi, Executive VP of Operations, and Steve Brooks, Executive VP of Land, Legal, Human Resources, and Marketing. During the Q&A session, we asked you to limit your questions to one and a follow-up. You're welcome to re-enter the queue later with additional questions. I would also note that we posted a Q3 2021 earnings presentation to our website this morning. During the course of this conference call, the company will be making forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws. Investors are cautioned that forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, and those actual results or developments may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements and the company can give no assurance that such forward-looking statements will prove to be correct. Ring Energy disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Accordingly, you should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. These and other risks are described in yesterday's press release and in our filings with the SEC. These documents can be found in the Investors section of our website at www.ringenergy.com. Should one or more of these risks materialize or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may differ materially. This conference call also includes references to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable measure under GAAP are contained in our earnings announcement released yesterday. Finally, as a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Paul McKinney, our Chairman and CEO.
spk06: Thank you, Al. We appreciate everyone joining us today. As you know, our top priority coming into 2021 was to strengthen our balance sheet through debt reduction. Our strategy has been to capitalize on the organic opportunities within our portfolio to maintain our production and liquidity and focus on generating strong cash flows to further pay down debt. We are pleased with our third quarter results as we once again generated free cash flow and strengthened our financial position by paying down debt, which in turn increased our liquidity. Looking at our results in more detail, we generated adjusted EBITDA of $19.7 million and $2.6 million of free cash flow during the third quarter, while paying down $5.5 million of bank debt. We ended the third quarter with approximately 56 million of liquidity, a 9% increase from the end of the second quarter. During the third quarter of 2021, we sold 758,387 barrels of oil equivalent or 8,243 barrels of oil equivalent per day. which was 4% lower than this year's second quarter sales of 792,551 barrels of oil equipment, or 8,709 barrels of oil equipment per day. impacting third quarter sales volumes were certain events including new well completion activities of the company and an offset operator that temporarily reduced the production from a number of our higher producing wells. I am happy to report that the production from these wells has since recovered to normal levels. Additionally, the company continued to experience lower than anticipated natural gas sales due to certain third party processing facilities capacity constraints in both the central basin platform and the northwest shelf areas. In the northwest shelf, the plant restrictions also reduced oil sales due to higher pressures. Finally, many of the CTRs completed during the third quarter resulted in longer than anticipated downtime while the horizontal sections of the wells were being cleaned down. We performed 10 CTRs, including 7 in the Northwest Shelf and 3 in the Central Basin Platform. Year to date, through September 30th, we have performed a total of 24 CTRs, including 18 in the Northwest Shelf and 6 in the Central Basin Platform. Offsetting the impact of lower sales volumes was higher third quarter prices for both crude oil and natural gas. that contributed to an overall 3% increase in revenues over the second quarter. A key highlight of this year's third quarter was the continued success of our 2021 drilling programs. As shared in the past, we have aimed in 2021 to invest in only our highest rate of return drilling opportunities. Our programs have been designed to not only mitigate our production declines, but to maximize cash flow as well. During the third quarter, the production from our Phase 3 drilling program contributed very little to third quarter production volumes, but should allow us to capitalize on the currently strong commodity prices during the fourth quarter. Perhaps more importantly, though, in assuming these strong commodity prices continue, the production from our Phase 3 and Phase 4 drilling programs should significantly increase revenue and earnings early next year as a majority of our lower-priced hedges roll off. With respect to what we accomplished, during the third quarter, we utilized two rigs to successfully execute our Phase III drilling program of four wells, including two one-mile lateral wells in Northwest Shelf and two one-and-a-half-mile lateral wells in the Central Basin Platform, with all four wells at 100% working interest. Consistent with the success of our Phase I and Phase II programs from the first half of this year, all of the Phase III wells were drilled and completed on schedule and within budget. As I indicated earlier, the wells were placed online late in the third quarter between September 9th and September 18th, so the production from these wells had a very minor impact on our third quarter sales volumes. However, we have been very pleased with the production results from these wells to date since they are meeting or exceeding our pre-drill expectations. The success of our 2021 drilling programs and the continued improvement in crude oil prices encouraged us to commence our Phase 4 drilling program of two wells, including one 1-mile lateral in the northwest shelf area with approximately a 75% working interest and a 1.5-mile lateral well in the Central Basin Platform with 100% working interest. The northwest shelf 1-mile lateral was placed on production at the end of October and is currently exceeding expectations. The Central Basin Platform 1.5 mile lateral well was successfully drilled in October and is awaiting completion and is expected to be placed on production before year end. While the production from these wells will not have a big impact on our 2021 production, it should provide a nice increase as we enter 2022. With that, I will turn the call over to Travis Thomas to discuss our financials in more detail. I will then come back and make a few closing comments. Travis?
spk02: Thanks, Paul. For the third quarter of 2021, we generated revenue of $49.4 million. a net income of $14.2 million, or $0.12 per diluted share. Excluding the estimated after-tax impact of pre-tax items, including $8.2 million non-cash unrealized gain on hedges and approximately $800,000 for share-based compensation expense, our adjusted net income was $6.8 million, or $0.07 per share. During the third quarter of 2021, we had approximately $16.3 million in cash flow from operations and $13.7 million in capital expenditures. The combined result was positive free cash flow of $2.6 million. For the three months ended September 30th, 2021, we had oil sales of 659,247 barrels and natural gas sales of 594,841 MCF for a total of 758,387 VOE. Our 3rd quarter 2021 realized pricing was 69 dollars and 61 cents per barrel of oil and 5 dollars 86 cents per of natural gas for an average of 65 dollars and 11 cents per. The differential between our average oil price received and the 9x WTI was a negative $1.05 per barrel for the third quarter of 2021 versus our second quarter average differential of negative $0.99 per barrel. Our average natural gas differential for Henry Hub was a positive $1.43 per MCF for the third quarter versus a second quarter positive differential of $1.07 per MCF. For more detailed discussions of our financials and other income statement line items, please refer to our earnings release and TINQ that was filed with the SEC yesterday. Of course, I will be happy to answer any questions you may have during today's Q&A session. As Paul discussed, during the third quarter, we were pleased to report another period in which we generated free cash flow, further paid down debt, and increased our liquidity position. We will continue to use much of our free cash flow to reduce our debt position with the level of free cash flow and cadence of debt pay down primarily driven by the timing of capital spending and market conditions. As of September 30, 2021, we had $295 million drawn on our revolving line of credit, and liquidity of $56.2 million, including $2 million in cash and $54.2 million available on the revolver, which included a reduction of $800,000 for letters of credit. We paid down our revolver by $5.5 million in the third quarter and a total of $18 million in the first nine months of 2021. Turning to our outlook for the remainder of the year. We expect fourth quarter sales of 8,800 to 9,200 BOEs per day, including 7,500 to 7,900 barrels of oils per day. Mentioned in the release, our estimated company net production in October averaged over 9,000 BOE per day. With the addition of two Phase 4 wells coming online in the fourth quarter, we are positioning ourselves to capitalize on what we expect to be a continued strong oil price environment in 2022. Keep in mind that we have been essentially fully hedged at lower prices for most of 2021. However, based on our current contracts in place, starting January 1, 2022, our hedge volumes will drop to 3,129 barrels per day. We anticipate an average lifting cost for the fourth quarter of 2021 of $10.50 to $11.50 per BOE. Lifting costs include lease operating expenses and gathering, transportation, and processing costs. Turning to our 4th quarter 2021 capital investment program. We expect total capital spending between 11 to 15M dollars with all expenditures funded by cash on hand and cash from operations. In addition to company directed drilling completion activities for the 2 well phase 4 program. Our capital spending outlook includes targeted well reactivations, workovers, infrastructure upgrades, and continuing our successful CTR program in the Northwest Shelf and Central Basin Platform areas. Also included is anticipated spending for lease costs, contractual drilling obligations, and non-operated drilling completion and capital workovers. And the updated investor presentation will provide a breakout of capital spending. Our third and fourth quarter 2021 capital program was designed to place us in a stronger position as we enter 2022. Regarding our future hedging activities, we believe it is important to protect our future cash flows, capital spending programs, and ability to pay down debt. However, we also want to participate in what we believe will be a rising price environment to the fullest extent possible. We look forward to sharing the details as we execute our opportunistic hedging strategy. So, with that, I will turn it back to Paul.
spk06: Thank you, Travis. In 2021, we executed on a number of initiatives that put in place new processes designed to improve how we evaluate the technical, operational, financial, and administrative aspects of our business. We hope that you are as pleased as we are with the progress we have made and look forward to further improvements in 2022 and beyond. A clear example of our success has been our targeted drilling program for 2021-2022. and our ongoing efforts to drive increased operational efficiencies in our pursuit of reducing costs and meaningfully strengthening our financial and market position. We are doing this by remaining squarely focused on generating free cash flow and improving our debt to EBITDA metrics. We can do this through continued debt reduction as well as growing our EBITDA. Another key focus for our company is the pursuit of strategic acquisitions, and we are active in the marketplace screening opportunities that we believe could make long-term sense for our stockholders. As we have discussed in the past, any potential acquisition using equity must bring in sufficient production, revenue, and cash flow to improve our leverage ratio, and the transaction metrics will need to be accretive to our existing stockholders. As you recall, we launched a sales process during the second quarter of 2021 to sell our Delaware assets. I had hoped by now we would have been able to share with you the terms of the sale of those assets, but that sales process is still underway. We continue to be in discussions with several interested parties, and will provide further updates as definitive information is known. Before I wrap up this call and turn it over for questions, I'd like to share what we are doing with respect to ESG. We are putting the final touches on our initial sustainability report, which we look forward to publishing before year end. With respect to 2022, we are actively working on our capital budget for next year. And although our board of directors has not approved these plans, we intend to maintain a single rig working for most of the year. The opportunities we have in the Northwest Shelf and Central Basin Platform should lead to meaningful production growth and allowing us to take advantage of the stronger commodity prices, increase revenue and earnings, and improve our balance sheet. In closing, we believe these are very exciting times to ring. The steps we have taken over the last 12 months position us very well for 2022, and we look forward to sharing our drilling plans for the next year and the coming months. We appreciate the continued support from our stockholders and look forward to keeping everyone appraised of our ongoing progress. And with that, I will turn it back over to Chuck for questions.
spk09: Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then 1 on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then 2. And at this time, we'll pause momentarily to assemble our roster. And the first question will come from Jeffrey Campbell with Allianz Global Partners. Please go ahead. Good morning.
spk10: Hey, good morning, Jeff. Jeff's release indicated that there was upside based upon positive results from year two, phase two, and phase three, excuse me, central basin platform wells. And these were the first new wells that were drilled in the area in two years. Can you qualify the elements contributing to this upside? I think some color here would be interesting.
spk06: You know, I'm going to turn that over to Marinos Baghdadi to answer that question. But I've got to tell you, we are very pleased with the results of all four of our wells. They're all doing very well. So, Marinos, do you want to answer the question specifically about the Central Basin Platform?
spk05: Sure. We have not drilled a well there in 2019, as you mentioned, Jeff, since 2019. And with these two wells and the results we're seeing, we've made a few changes to the completion practices, a few tweaks to the completion of the wells. And based on the results and current oil pricing, we're encouraged that we'll be able to continue drilling in the CBP area in the coming years.
spk06: I think it does. I'll just add that when we first evaluated what had been done in the past, we quickly came to realize that a lot of the drilling in the Central Basin Platform is very geologically based. We put a lot of time into evaluating the geology and the locations that we picked. At the same time, we did a complete review of all the completion technology like Marino's stated, and we decided to make some tweaks, and the results of that have been very positive, and so what you're going to find going into next year is that we have a handful of wells that we're going to continue drilling down in there, applying what we've learned this year, and hopefully continuing to improve the results, but right now we're very happy with the results, and they're very strong economically.
spk01: This is Alex. I'd like to add one more thing. The other thing that's contributing to the success of the CBP well support is that we've gone back and geosteered all the wells prior, and we're really focused on the landing zone. So that's another key contributor to our success so far in the CBP. So we're very optimistic of what the future holds there.
spk10: Okay. That was very helpful. It sounds like when we kind of pull all that together, it's better targeting, better drilling, better completion. Absolutely. You noted that two rigs were released after the Phase 3 program. Was there one rig involved at Phase 4? Has it been released? And if so, when do you anticipate resumption of drilling?
spk06: Yeah, we actually drilled each of the wells with a different rig. Both rigs have been released, and that was due to several issues. issues, I guess, and issues may not be the right way of saying that, but I think it was a top drive issue, wasn't it? We were originally going to do it with one rig, but we decided to pick up another rig because of the challenges we had with the top drive on the first well drilled.
spk10: Okay, and do you have any idea when you're going to resume? I assume you're not actively drilling now. Do you have any sense of when you're going to resume drilling for
spk05: Correct, Jeff. We finished drilling the CVP well on October 17th. That's when we released the rig. And we have actually two rigs that we're evaluating now for our 2022 program. And if we need to decide to drill any more wells towards the end of this year, we'll be able to pick that rig up. One of those two rigs up, they're available. And we feel comfortable with the rig situation as it stands today.
spk06: One of the things that is impacting our plans, just to let you know, and this is a little bit more color than perhaps you asked for, but sourcing all the materials to drill our wells is an issue. We're seeing supply chain issues affect our drilling program. And so before we pick up a rig, we're trying to ensure that we will not have delays associated with those type of problems. And so we're securing everything we can prior to picking up the rig. And once we get it going, we hope to keep it going for the rest of the year or most of the rest of the year.
spk10: Yeah, that was very helpful. I appreciate that extra insight. I'll get back into Q. Thanks. Thank you, Jeff.
spk09: The next question will come from Neil Dingman with Truist Securities. Please go ahead.
spk03: Morning, Paul. Paul, my question is when you guys have been fishing on both obviously the rig side and the completion side, I'm wondering when you look, I know you don't have full guide out for next year, but fair to say, I mean, I guess – Is the plan potentially still to run more of a maintenance capital program? I guess what I'm asking that is I know you guys are highly free cash flow focused, doing a good job paying down debt. And I'm just wondering around that, do you think that... when you and your team look at it, is, you know, is purely just a maintenance capital, a light activity program like some others are doing, or given the returns of your wells, you know, do you step things up a little bit? So, again, I'm not looking for specific guide predictions or just overall colors, you know, I'm coming from.
spk06: No, Neil, that's a really good question, and this brings us back to questions that we've received in past calls. And I've stated we're going to still continue with this strategy. As we improve our leverage metrics, we are going to slowly change the allocation of that capital more towards growth. And so I think what you can see, you know, the big issue for us, I mean, if you look beyond this quarter, next year, at the beginning of next year, the majority of our lower-priced hedges roll off. We're positioning ourselves not only with the capital spending in the last part of this year to increase our production, so we kind of springboard into the next year. really ramp up the revenue and cash flow. And because our metrics are improving with that additional EBITDA, we will allocate more money towards growth. And so next year, it's not going to be an abrupt change. It's going to be a gradual change, but we're going to gradually start putting our foot down on the pedal, so to speak, to increase growth.
spk03: I got you. I got you. And then the thoughts, I know you've already pretty well hedged into next year, your thoughts on prediction. I know some guys have redone hedges a little bit, take advantage of upside. I don't know if you can do any thoughts about doing that or just thoughts about more tolling hedging further up.
spk06: Well, like Travis mentioned in his portion of the call, we're going to have a little over 3,100 barrels a day of lower price hedges that we'll carry into next year. Right now, It's our belief, anyway, that our shareholders are investing in us because they really do believe in the upside in energy prices, and so we are going to try to structure our defensive position so that we can take advantage, full advantage of the prices as we go forward into next year. And so our hedging strategy right now is clearly focused. We will always have a hedging strategy that puts in the protections necessary so we can continue to pay down debt, so we can protect our capital program. But we're going to structure it such that we can take full advantage of the prices as they continue to remain strong.
spk09: Yeah, thank you. The next question will come from Noel Parks with Tuohy Brothers. Please go ahead. Hey, good morning.
spk10: Good morning, Noel.
spk07: Just a follow-up, I think, if you touched on this. I think you did. But could you just go over, again, a bit about the GMA trend in the quarters of the last couple of years? And I noticed also that the aggregate LOE trend has also dipped slightly over the last few quarters. Can you just go down a bit on that? Thanks.
spk06: Yeah, sure. I sure will. Yeah, G&A trends. One of the things that I've done when I came on board, we came in with a pretty skinny staff. We were doing our best to keep G&A low. But we have started filling out our engineering, our land. operations, and financial groups with the appropriate headcount, so to speak, to manage the business. And so here this last, in the recent past, we've hired a few more people, so you're going to see a slight increase in the G&A. But with respect to LOE, we still have several initiatives. The benefit of our CTR program, Doesn't occur all at once, but collectively we're seeing really good progress in lowering our LOE. Now that is in the face of rising costs and prices that we're seeing as a result of the supply chain issues and as we're seeing with respect to inflation. I've been kind of surprised when I read, you know, non-oil field related information associated with the inflation rates that we're incurring. I think here recently we saw something that's more indicative of what we're actually realizing in the field because prices are really up. I mean, especially with respect to steel. Now these price increases have affected cementing and all the other services that we utilize as we repair our wells and maintain our wells. And so operating costs are just going up. And so, but we'll see how that goes because we still believe we have additional initiatives to continue to reduce costs. Those cost reductions, though, are going to be offset by, and whether it's partially or fully, we'll have to wait and see. But we're seeing some significant increases out in the field right now associated with inflation and supply chains.
spk07: Great. Thanks for the explanation. And one thing, just talk on the M&A, the field front. I'd be curious to hear about maybe what the potential buyers of the Delaware Basin are taking. I'm just wondering if sort of like the prior process, if their access to financing was among the things sort of slowing that process down. And then if you could extend that out broadly, just maybe talk on that. the seller side of M&A in the region. Sort of, you know, what's the psychology these days? Did ask spread? Is that the issue? You know, we were seeing higher but somewhat, you know, more stable trading range of creek prices for M&A. Okay.
spk06: Yeah, very good. So with respect to the Delaware, we continue to have strong interests. The size and the type, if we owned the deep rice, this stuff would have been sold a lot quicker. But what we're finding is that the real challenge from our perspective appears to be the interested parties with buying our property appear to have challenges with securing or getting the financing necessary to actually get this thing across the finish line. If you remember what happened to us last year, we just didn't want to enter into another transaction, sign a purchase and sale agreement with someone who can't get the financing. So we spent quite a bit of time working with the potential buyers here and trying to flush out with a much higher level of certainty their financing positions. And what we're finding is that they're having difficulty getting their financing across the table. So the banks or the financers of assets in this size, I guess, a smaller size, They appear to be a little bit more challenging to get something over the finish line than the larger banks dealing with larger transactions. That's our observation right now. And so we're still working with folks. But the one thing we don't want to do is repeat, you know, the. you know, what we encountered last year. Now, with respect to the spread and the difference between what we're seeing out there in terms of what buyers and sellers, there's always a gap there. But I believe you're seeing transactions occur. Some of the deals that we have, you know, participated in but were unsuccessful, we know that we were in the right zip code. The big challenge, and I've said this before in the past, our challenge has been our balance sheet, and I haven't made any qualms about it. I mean, the balance sheet has stood in the way, and so we said that we wanted to transact with an acquisition in a way that also improves our balance sheet, so it improves our leverage ratio, and to do that, we would need to use equity and so the other part of our strategy and my commitment to my shareholders was to make sure that if we did something, a transaction, that on the tail end of that transaction, my existing shareholders would have an accretive benefit associated with cash flow of barrels and barrels of production per share and all that. And so if we had the cash, we would have been successful probably already this year. And so most people look at equity and they want a disproportionate amount of equity and and I'm not going to lose sight of the strategy that I've laid out for my shareholders because I think my shareholders support that, but I'm not going to forget the fact that I promised my existing shareholders that the deal we do will be accretive. Otherwise, we won't do one because we have the organic ability to continue to pay down debt and strengthen our balance sheet with the assets that we have. I'd like to accelerate that, but I'm not going to do it in a way that causes us to compromise on the strategy we've laid out for our shareholders.
spk09: Great, thanks a lot. The next question will come from John White with Roth Capital. Please go ahead.
spk08: Good morning, everybody. Hey, good morning, John. Yeah, Paul, thanks for that detailed commentary on the Delaware asset sale. You were very frank, and I appreciate it. Switching to the topic of you making an acquisition, I think everybody is aware there's probably more private companies in the horizontal San Andres than there are public companies. So I would guess that gives you a lot of targets to work on. And I'm wondering, are you looking at opportunities outside of the horizontal San Andres play and in other parts of the Permian Basin?
spk06: And yes, we are. We do like the San Andres horizontal oil play and we're also looking at opportunities to acquire more interest in that play. But as you know, that play also extends down into the Central Basin Platform where we've drilled a couple wells already this year and are very successful. But we really like the Central Basin Platform area in the southern part of the Northwest Shelf primarily because we operate there. We've got a really strong operating team. And I'd love to be able to spread the cost of that team over more wells and more barrels of production just to capture those synergies. But we have also seen some other opportunities outside of that area that are very appealing. And so my primary pursuit is finding opportunities that generate the returns that I know that are competitive and comparable to the ones that I have in-house. I just don't want to dilute my existing portfolio of properties by buying properties that have super high operating costs or don't have the same type of economics because I won't allocate capital to them. And so I'm trying to keep a really good and attractive portfolio of high margin, low decline, and profitable assets. We like where we are. We're going to continue to focus there. But there are other assets that are just slightly outside of the Central Basin platform and the Southern Shelf that are appealing as well. I can't promise you one way or another, but we are focusing primarily in the Permian Basin. We haven't really evaluated anything outside of the Permian Basin right now, but there are some opportunities even outside of there. But I think we're going to continue to focus on the Permian Basin just simply because we know it. We're working there. We're very effective and cost-effective there. Does that answer your question, John?
spk08: Yes. Thank you for that and appreciate the detail. And good luck on the fourth quarter drilling effort.
spk06: Thank you.
spk09: Again, if you have a question, please press star, then one. Our next question will come from Jeffrey Campbell with Allianz Global Partners. Please go ahead.
spk10: Hi, and thanks for taking my additional questions. I got two more. My first one is, does your fourth quarter 21 guidance anticipate contingent struggles with the third-party processing to recover nameplate capacity? And what's your full view on this issue going into 2022?
spk06: Yeah, I'm going to partially answer that, but I'm going to turn it over to Marinos as well. Yeah, we struggle with what's going on primarily in the Central Basin Platform. You know, the operator of those facilities continues to tell us that they're going to have things up and running. We'll be up and running for a few days or maybe five days or a week, and then all of a sudden we're down again. And so we're really struggling with it. And I don't think we're the only operator. I think most of the operators out there on the central basin platform that sell their gas for this particular gathering system have struggled with the same issues. I'm tired of making promises as to when that's going to come online. We began this year, and the original guidance we had, we assumed that after the winter storm that all of that would be restored, and it turned out that a lot of that equipment was older rotating equipment that was challenging to repair, and it's proven to still be that way to this day. Marinos, is there any more color you want to add to that?
spk05: No, sir. Well, actually, yes, there's a couple things. We are working, discussing with other parties, alternatives for taking our gas in certain areas. And in addition to that, we're making efforts. We've been installing compressors in certain areas that have allowed us to increase our gas sales quite a bit. And we're going to continue to do that to kind of mitigate the problem while we navigate through this.
spk10: Okay, that was helpful. Let me just repeat one part of it again. Is anticipation of continued struggles here already anticipated in the guidance you provided for the fourth quarter?
spk04: Yes, they are.
spk10: Okay, great. Thank you. And my last question was, do you have any particular expectations regarding your ongoing next bank redetermination?
spk06: Well, we're in the final phases of that. We're pleased with how that is turning out. I don't really... I hate to go online before the banks actually hold their vote and make their final decisions. But right now, things look very favorable. I think part of what you saw, if you go back to the spring redetermination, the banks did not have any further requirements for hedging. It appears that that's the direction we're going here again. And so liquidity is strong, and we anticipate that it will at least stay the same that it is.
spk01: I'd like to add one thing. This is Alex Dyes on the RBL. The price decks have come out, and they are higher than the spring. That's right. We're working with our banks to, you know, fully finish the red termination and should be out hopefully in the next month or so. Yeah. Yeah, I think that was helpful.
spk10: I appreciate it. And, again, congratulations on the quarter.
spk06: Hey, thank you very much. We're really excited about the quarter. I know the production was lower than we anticipated, but if you look at how we position this company for next year, we're looking at a really strong first quarter as we springboard out of the fourth quarter this year.
spk09: As there are no further questions, this concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Paul McKinney, Chairman and CEO, for any closing remarks. Please go ahead.
spk06: Yeah, thank you, everybody, for joining us today. I would like to remind you that we have a special stockholders meeting coming up next week, and so we look forward to everybody voting. So with that, I'll end this meeting, and thank you again for your interest and support in Ring Energy.
spk09: The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.
Disclaimer