Oasis Petroleum Inc.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the OASIS second quarter earnings results conference call. All participants are currently in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please send to 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 and then one. To withdraw your questions, you may press star and two. Please also note today's event is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference call over to Michael Liu, CFO. Sir, please go ahead.

Thank you, Jamie. Good morning, everyone. Today, we are reporting our second quarter 2021 financial and operational results. We're delighted to have you on our call. I'm joined today by Danny Brown, Taylor Reed, as well as other members of the team. Please be advised that our remarks on both Oasis Petroleum and Oasis Petroleum Partners including the answers to your questions, include statements that we believe to be forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to be materially different from those currently disclosed in our earnings releases and conference calls. Those risks include, among others, matters that we have described in our earnings releases as well as in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission including our annual report on Form 10-K and our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. We disclaim any obligation to update these forward-looking statements. During this conference call, we will make reference to non-GAAP measures, and reconciliations to the applicable GAAP measures can be found in our earnings releases and on our websites. We may also reference our current investor presentation, which you can find on our website. With that, I'll turn the call over to Danny.

Thank you, Michael. Good morning to all and thanks for joining our call. We sincerely appreciate your interest today. Before I get started, I'd also like to thank the entire OASIS team for their continued hard work and dedication to our organization. I've gotten to know the company and our people better over the past few months, and I couldn't be more impressed. I know we've all been very busy executing on our operational and strategic objectives, and you should all be very proud of what we've accomplished. We are in a great position to succeed going forward. So, turning back to our call, since I joined OASIS in mid-April, I've had the opportunity to reacquaint myself with many of you in the investment community. I've enjoyed our conversations and want to emphasize that your feedback is valued, and it's been influential in how we've thought about setting strategy, priorities, and plans. I look forward to continuing the dialogue. Now, before I hand it over to Taylor to discuss our operational highlights, let me give a few high-level thoughts. First, OASIS delivered another solid quarter with volumes exceeding expectations and costs below plan. Even with all the strategic activity we announced during the second quarter, our second half plan is essentially unchanged other than the great news that our full year capital is expected to be below our original expectations. Also during the quarter, the company determined it is eligible under Section 382 of the Internal Revenue Code to use its net operating loss position to offset taxable income in 2021 and beyond. Michael will spend more time discussing this later in the call, but the main takeaway is we expect significant cash tax savings versus our prior expectations. Second, we close the Permian divestiture at the end of June and expect our Williston acquisition that we announced in May to close sometime late in the third quarter. While this is a little later than we originally modeled, the delay is just due to scheduling challenges early in the approval process. All parties are aligned, we don't see any issues with the close, and the purchase price will be adjusted downward with the cash flow generated by the asset since the effective date. Third, we continue to adhere to our strategic objectives that we think differentiate the OASIS story and are beneficial to all stakeholders. Because I spoke about these at length last quarter and their significant detail included in our IR material, I'll keep my comments brief. So in summary, we are focused on maintaining a strong balance sheet, returns on and of capital, alignment with management and shareholders, ESG leadership, effective risk management, and enhancing the value of our assets. And speaking of ESG, we've mentioned before that OASIS is dedicated to producing a cleaner, low-cost barrel while being engaged with local communities and conscious of stakeholder interest. Importantly, we are also committed to providing increased transparency on our efforts. And to that end, I'm pleased to announce that we have completed our first sustainability report. We expect to have a formal press release soon, and the report will be available on our website. I would encourage everyone to read through it, as it does a really nice job presenting OASIS's core values, our history of being a responsible corporate citizen, and different initiatives we have in place to improve our performance going forward. While OASIS has always been dedicated to environmental, social, and governance issues, we aim to be more proactive in providing disclosure around these topics going forward. I also wanted to touch briefly on our midstream ownership in light of the strategic actions we've taken year-to-date. OASIS remains differentiated versus many of our peers, given the large ownership in our midstream company, OASIS Midstream Partners. In March, OASIS took the important step of simplifying our midstream ownership, which was accretive to both OASIS and OMP, increased transparency of our midstream ownership, and strengthened OASIS' balance sheet. Following the simplification transaction, in June, we sold down approximately 3.6 million units and declared a special dividend of $4 per share to OASIS shareholders. Our midstream ownership is now represented by our holding of approximately 33.8 million O&P units. Importantly, we continue to evaluate additional actions we can take to unlock what we see as trap value for the OASIS shareholder. Finally, we have some new slides in our investor deck that highlight our inventory and capital plan through 2025. I'll ask Taylor to speak in more detail on these items, but at a high level, I want to emphasize the strength of our inventory position, which supports a low reinvestment rate and a compelling amount of free cash flow for years to come. As we evaluate possible uses for this free cash flow, we will continue to take shareholder-friendly approaches. So far this year, you've seen OASIS institute our first fixed dividend and announce our intention to increase it 33% upon closing the Williston acquisition. Additionally, we paid the special dividend mentioned above and instituted a share repurchase program and will continue to be active on that front, provided we see a disconnect between share price and intrinsic value. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Taylor to give some operational color. Taylor?

Thanks, Danny. OASIS saw strong performance across volumes, capital and operating costs. In the second quarter, we completed 18 gross wells with 11 in the Williston and 7 in the Delaware. Our focus on cost reductions, well-designed and operating efficiencies has resulted in strong base and capital performance and sustainable free cash flow for years to come. On the well cost side, we have made tremendous progress over the past couple of years. In the Bakken, we have recently seen wells in the low $6 million range, down about 20 percent from early 2020. While we've seen inflationary pressure in select areas such as steel, we've been finding offsets in other areas which has kept overall well costs in check. For example, during the second quarter, we had record frack efficiencies in Wild Basin, where we set a record for pump time in a day. On steel, as a reminder, we have locked in pricing for most of the remainder of the year. Overall costs are turning below budget, which allowed us to cut our capital expenditure guidance by 7% for 2021. Let me touch on our recent Williston acquisition. During the second quarter, the operator brought on four new wells on the disco pad in the Fort Berthold area. Results were strong and validate our view of over 40 top tier locations of similar quality across the acquired assets. We expect the acquisition to close late in the third quarter. As a reminder, our third quarter volume guidance does not include any acquisition volumes. We plan to let the acquired assets decline in the second half of the year and into early 2022 before stabilizing overall company volumes at maintenance capital levels. Our fourth quarter average production guidance of 76,000 barrels equivalent per day includes a full quarter of the acquisition. I would like to reiterate our excitement with this accretive acquisition. We continue to be focused on the communities in which we operate and will dedicate the resources for the new assets that we operate in a sustainable manner. We are especially excited about establishing operations on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation and look forward to working with the three affiliated tribes. We recently received tribal approvals and are now working with the Bureau of Indian Affairs to complete the approval process and expect to close by the end of the third quarter. Our operations group has been engaged with the various teams on the new assets, and we look forward to integrating the properties and will welcome our new employees later this year. We are currently running one rig and expect to complete between 11 and 13 wells in the back half of the year, most of which will come online in October. This sets us up for a strong fourth quarter average of 76,000 equivalents per day. As we look to 2022, we would expect a similar volume trajectory as compared to 2021, with production expected to decline from the fourth quarter into the beginning of the year. before increasing in the second half of the year as we step up completions. Full year average production for 2022 is expected to approximate 72,000 equivalents per day, about two-thirds oil with E&P capital of about $300 million. As a reminder, we will be picking up our second rig in South Indian Hills in the fourth quarter and plan to keep it running along with the first rig for all of 2022. I would like to pivot now to a discussion of our inventory. We've expanded our disclosure in our investor presentation to better illuminate the quality of our assets and the free cash flow generation that the assets and our organization can support on a sustained basis. We've identified approximately 670 locations that support strong returns at oil prices below $50 per barrel, and most of that substantially below that number. Of these locations, about 140 are three-mile laterals, and our team is working on increasing that number over time. In 2022, the current plan calls for approximately $300 million in EMP capex to support volume levels of about 72,000 equivalents per day. We'd expect to generate approximately $250 to $300 million of after-tax free cash flow in 2022 at $55 oil and $275 gas. including the impact of our current hedge book. Using current prices, free cash flow would be substantially higher. In terms of specific projects, we'll finish up drilling Wild Basin, South Nessun, and North Indian Hills in 2022, and see the program in 2023 and beyond. We'll include a substantial contribution from Painted Woods, South Indian Hills, the City of Williston, Alger, the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, and Hebron. Economics are strong across the program, with the average well in our roughly 670 locations delivering IRR of 46% at 55 and 275. As you can see on slide 14, our decline rates have become quite shallow relative to recent history. and given that our program is fairly modest, we expect the PDP decline profiles to remain relatively flat. This is important as low declines support free cash generation, and the capital intensity to keep volumes flat is much lower than when volumes were growing quickly. Also, as I noted earlier, our well costs have come down substantially over the past few years. Some of the decrease relate to service cost concessions, while others are more structural in nature, resulting from high efficiencies in cycle times, improved well design, and savings gained from our intense focus on cost structure across our business this year. Well spacing has increased as well. We are now planning five to six wells per DSU versus eight to 10 in recent years. The wider spacing has improved capital efficiency and should result in shallower declines over the life of a well. Additionally, approximately 20% of our 670 well inventory is expected to be three-mile laterals. For our near-term program over the next four years, that number increases to 40%. The Basin has seen a steady increase in three-mile laterals over the past several years, and there are extensive analogs to evaluate as we engineer our program. The improved results are compelling, as a three-mile lateral allows for an approximate 50% increase in oil EUR with only 25 percent more capital. Our blocky acreage position works well for re-spacing from two- to three-mile laterals and should yield increasing number of opportunities to add more of these to the inventory as we move forward. To close, operationally, we executed well in the second quarter. Our legacy asset base is performing well, and we're on track to close the Williston acquisition in the third quarter. The team has done a tremendous job across the board, leading to impressive performance in project inventory, project returns, and free cash generation, all of which allow us to return significant cash back to our shareholders. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Michael to discuss some financial highlights.

Thanks, Taylor. As Taylor mentioned, we're expecting to close the Wilson acquisition at the end of the third quarter. We've provided a third quarter guidance update which excludes any impact from the acquisition, while fourth quarter guidance includes a full quarter of performance from the acquired assets. Operationally, guidance implies volumes are in line with what we expected in May, while costs and DIFs are a bit better, and capital spending is less than expected. As a reminder, the effective date of the transaction was April 1st, so the purchase consideration will be reduced by free cash flow generated from the asset from April 1st through closing. Additionally, in the second quarter, OASIS put down a deposit of approximately $75 million with the original purchase price of $745 million. As of June 30th, OASIS had approximately $779 million in cash and $400 million of debt outstanding related to the high yield offering in May. Currently, OASIS has zero drawn under the borrowing base with elected commitments of $450 million. And upon closing of the acquisition, our borrowing base is expected to increase to $650 million, with our elected commitments staying at $450 million. OASIS continues to do a good job managing LOE and minimizing downtime. E&P LOE averaged $10.21 per BOE for the second quarter, below the low end of our guidance. and we expect per unit LOE to decrease into the back half of the year as volumes increase. E&P cash G&A expense was $11 million, including a $3 million of expected but non-recurring items. E&P cash G&A per BOE guidance for the fourth quarter of 21 remains unchanged. Both crude and gas realizations were strong in the quarter as our marketing team continues to do a fabulous job. Oil realizations were particularly strong as market conditions were quite tight in the quarter. E&P CapEx was approximately $52.4 million in the second quarter below expectations. As Taylor noted, we had record frack efficiency during the quarter. The remainder of the difference versus guidance can be explained by timing, higher partner interest in the waste swells, and other items. We lowered our four-year capital spending guidance by 7%. The reduction in CapEx expectations is unrelated to acquisition closure timing. On the volume side, OASIS remains on track to meet the fourth quarter volume guidance outlined in May, which includes our first full quarter of the acquired asset base. During the quarter, we determined that OASIS qualifies for an exception to the limitation on its NOL carryforge under IRC Section 382, which reduces our cash taxes to zero in the second quarter and for the full year of 2021, a savings of over $50 million versus our original guidance. By year end 21, OASIS estimates an NOL balance ranging from 400 to $500 million, which could be used to reduce the company's future income tax obligations. Additionally, we implemented a tax benefits preservation plan which is designed to protect the availability of our NOLs and other tax attributes. This plan will go away upon the earlier of three years or when the NOL is used, and we will also be putting this up for shareholder vote at our next shareholder meeting. Also during the second quarter, OASIS sold down approximately 3.6 million OMP units for $24 per unit. This transaction is not expected to be taxable given the NOLs I just discussed. Proceeds from the unit sale were used to fund a $4 special dividend paid in July 21st. Separately, OASIS declared its second quarter dividend of 37.5 cents per share, the third fixed dividend we've declared this year. Upon closing of our Willison acquisition, the company continues to expect to raise its normal fixed quarterly dividend from 37.5 cents to 50 cents per share per quarter, or a 33% increase. Additionally, our $100 million share repurchase program remains in place. We've repurchased 14.6 million of common stock to date. In closing, we look forward... As we look forward, the business is in an enviable position to generate substantial and sustainable free cash flow for the foreseeable future and will continue to take a balanced approach to investing capital and returning cash to shareholders. I'd also like to thank the team for its hard work on the operating side, as well as the significant progress on the key corporate strategic objectives. With that, I'll hand the call back over to Jamie for questions.

Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we'll begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star and then 1 using a touch-tone telephone. To withdraw your questions, you may press star and 2. If you are using a speakerphone, we do ask that you please pick up the handset before pressing the numbers to ensure the best sound quality. Once again, that is star and then one to ask a question.

We'll pause momentarily to assemble the roster. Our first question today comes from Scott Arnold from RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead with your question.

Hey, good morning, guys. Congrats on the quarter. I think I want to start out maybe, you know, Taylor, you obviously talked a little bit about the shape of activity into next year. And, you know, obviously it sounds like you're thinking about, you know, obviously, you know, letting the acquired assets decline a little bit before you reinvest it. So as we kind of think about big picture OASIS together, you're adding the second rig, and I would assume all those rigs are going to be on legacy OASIS assets. Right. Is the structural shape of this, you're going to kind of dip down one and, you know, maybe in the first quarter, second quarter, and then kind of bounce above that 72 average for the year? Is that sort of the right way to think about sort of the shape? And how many well completions does that contemplate?

Yeah, Scott. So, yeah, good question. You know, adding the second rig in October just because of cycle times is naturally going to push – push those completions out a bit into 2022. Same because we're going to be entering South Nessun and start drilling there. We're in Indian Hills right now. We're going to start fracking those in October as well. So the South Nessun is going to start up about when the new rig comes in and starts drilling at South Indian Hills. So both of those end up getting pushed in terms of completions kind of 2Q like you talked about. So we'll dip into first Q, probably a bit into 2Q, and then rebound from there. And then in terms of overall well completions, it's kind of, depending on timing, kind of 40 or so completions could be a little above that. But obviously a pickup from what we did this year just based on that increased activity. And with that, as you said, we'll let the QEP Assets come down a bit. We're going from 76,000 equivalents a day, fourth quarter of this year with the combined assets, and then we'll level off, you know, more around 72,000 next year.

Okay. Okay. And just to clarify, those 40-plus completions, those are all in legacy OASIS properties. Is that right?

Correct.

Yeah. Got it. Okay. Okay. And then I guess my next question is a little bit on – how you think about shareholder return strategies going forward. Obviously, you guys have used a pretty good portfolio of things and you've been pretty assertive about giving money back in different forms. Where does things like variable dividends play into the equation? Is that something that's also a consideration? Or at this point in time, do you all feel comfortable with continuing to increase the fixed dividend in using the buybacks and maybe opportunistic special dividends?

Thanks for the question, Scott. This is Danny. So I think sort of our guiding principle on these things is really going to be around creating value for shareholders. So that's at the end of the day, that's what we're trying to accomplish. But we recognize that returning cash is a big component of that. So hopefully our actions to date where we've done that in several different forms sort of demonstrate our commitment to that concept. I think we'll be balanced in our approach. You've seen us sort of taking all of the above approach so far with a fixed, with a special, with a share repurchase program. We're discussing the possibility of how would a variable dividend, should we want to do that? How would that look? And so we'll continue to think through all these different concepts. But at the end of the day, what's going to guide our action is how do we create the most value for our shareholders.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star and then 1. Our next question comes from Derek Whitfield from Stiefel.

Good morning, all, and congrats on your update. Thanks, Derek. With my first question, I wanted to focus on the tax rolling, and more specifically, Does the ruling change your strategic view on how best to crystallize value that is inherent in your portfolio but really not reflected in your stock price today?

Yeah, Derek, it's a great question. Look, there's a lot of work that was done around kind of the tax ruling and how we think about that. Obviously, with the sale of the Permian asset, it created a large tax loss for us as well. So that's kind of an update from the beginning of the year. With kind of the higher oil prices, the simplification work, along with the OMP unit sale, we had over $200 million of kind of taxable income this year that with this election we can actually shield, which is fantastic. It's about over $50 million of cash taxes that we'll save this year. And on top of that, we'll continue to hold a large and a well position going forward in that $400 to $500 million range. And as you mentioned, that's a considerable asset that can be used in shielding kind of future taxable transactions, whether it's additional monetizations of assets or just with strong kind of pricing and cash flow coming back to the company. you know taxable income from that perspective so it's a great position to be in for the company to continue to drive higher free cash flow and Danny mentioned kind of gives us a lot of decisions to make in terms of returning that capital to shareholders in the best way to create shareholder value makes sense and perhaps for my follow-up I'll focus the question with Taylor referencing the painted woods case study on page 15

wanted to see if you could offer any commentary on how this area with three-mile laterals competes in your portfolio when you plan to pursue the first three-mile lateral well, and if you think there's an opportunity to improve the well performance beyond the analog set that you evaluated.

Yeah, so, Derek, good question. You know, as you look across, you know, I'd say Painted Woods and then really in general the whole set of inventory, especially as we look forward over this next four-year plan that we've been talking about. Some important factors here. One, upspacing. We went from eight to 10 wells to five to six wells, and that's improving capital efficiencies of per-well URs. Talked a lot about being able to bring down capital costs, so nice capital efficiency improvements. And then along with that, the decline profiles, we expect to be shallower as these wells produce over time. So all those things help the overall profile. In terms of when we drill the first three-mile laterals, we're actually going to drill eight wells later this year in South Indian Hills. And then the first three-mile wells in Painted Woods will happen next year. uh and we you know those will be preferentially done as we move into prep into the painted woods position and and just you know for for note over 40 percent of our uh of our wells and painted woods it's close to 45 will be three mile laterals and when you look at the the program over the next four years about 40 percent of that are all three mile laterals so nice uh you know nice increase in Economics, you're only spending about a 25% increase in capital, but seeing up to a 50% uplift in reserves. And so really nice increase in economics in doing those projects.

Great. Very helpful. Thanks for your time.

And our next question is a follow-up from Scott Arnold from RBC Capital Markets.

Please go ahead with your follow-up.

Thanks. I'm just kind of curious if you could elaborate a little bit more on, you know, how you think about OMP going forward. You guys have done a pretty good job of, you know, really simplifying that in a quick manner. But, you know, I think there's probably more work to be done. But can you give us your thoughts on the various options available for you all? And, you know, is there a time frame you guys are targeting at, you know, kind of bringing that – you know, to fruition to get it to the final kind of position you want it in?

This is Danny. Appreciate the question, Scott. I think when we look at OASIS shares and how we trade, we continue to see some of the parts discount in the OASIS shares. And so we are evaluating, as you know, our options on how do we go about illuminating that value for the OASIS shareholder. I'd say we're doing that with haste. We're doing that with diligence, and I would expect that we have more to share on this in the near future. I think whatever path we decide to go down is going to impact our timing a little bit, and so I don't want to commit to specific timing on it, but do know that we're actively looking at that internally and expect to share more with you in the future.

Is ultimately the goal to – effectively find a way to deconsolidate? Is that the plan? And so would you be willing to still own some of O&P in some structure as long as you're able to deconsolidate? Is that sort of the end goal?

I think deconsolidation is a, I don't know if I would say deconsolidation is the end goal. The end goal is to make sure there's read-through value to the OASIS shareholder on the value we've got within O&P. And so we think one of the one of the steps toward that is likely deconsolidation where we don't sort of confuse the issue with those holdings for our share base. So I think that's part of it, but not necessarily the end goal. The end goal is really about getting the value seen by the OASIS shareholder.

Okay, understood. And also another question, too, you know, operationally, you guys have obviously identified, you know, the greater inventory, you know, certainly at a price that's kind of closer to where commodities are right now. In your development plan over the next few years, are those incremental locations in what I'm referring to as the difference between what you guys evaluated at $40 versus the $60 or $65? Are any of those in the inventory, or is that one of those things more for demonstration purposes of the size of the assets holistically? Okay.

Yeah, so really as you look at the inventory in this plan period, it's the same set of inventory we were talking about previously. And so we were focused early on on a much lower price environment, talking about a $45 deck and what's economic at that level. And just as a reminder, that included Wild Basin, South Ness, and Indian Hills, Fort Berthold, City of Wilson, Painted Woods, and North Alger. So the incremental inventory to get to the 670 that we were talking about currently very, you know, we're here being at $70 oil. We thought, look, man, let's go from 45 to 55 and talk about this robust set of inventory. And the additions there were Painted Woods West, Montana, Red Bank and Dublin, a bit of our Fort Berthold to the south and east, and then south Cottonwood, and robust economics in those areas. We really did the same things as what we did in the other areas, upspaced, really have pushed capital costs down, and then an emphasis on three-mile laterals, a big chunk of those. We're not going to get to those projects until you get four or five years out, but just thought it was important to highlight those and let people know, look, we've got a super resilient set of inventory that goes out 12 years that the pace of drilling will be doing next year.

Understood. Thanks for that. Our next question comes from Phillips Johnson from Capital One.

Please go ahead with your question.

Thank you. Just one question for me. It's really just to follow up on Scott's earlier question regarding return of capital. So if we run $45 oil and $250 gas kind of held flat forever in our model, we show the leverage ratio remains well below half a turn sort of indefinitely, and a free cash flow yield would still be somewhere sort of in the 5% to 10% range over the next several years. You guys have been fairly aggressive so far about returning cash to shareholders. But my question is, given that backdrop, is there any reason you wouldn't gravitate towards a more formalized fixed plus variable dividend policy or take an even more aggressive approach around share buybacks? I guess my question is, do you guys see any drawbacks or downside in either of those options that might give you guys pause?

Thanks for the question, Phillip. This is Danny. I think as we think about return of capital, again, I appreciate the comments, and we have been pretty forward-leaning in this and tried to make sure that we've sort of attacked this from multiple different fronts. We're continuing to discuss that, both as a management group and with our board, on how do we best structure a return of capital program, what role might variable dividends play within such a framework. And so I would say that our thoughts around this are ongoing. The guiding principle, though, is really about creating the most value we can for shareholders. And, again, we think returning capital is a big component of that, and we're continuing to – we believe that firmly, and we're going to continue to evaluate those programs and our actions around this as our thoughts develop.

Sounds good.

Thank you, Danny.

And ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we'll end today's question and answer session. I'd like to turn the floor back over to management for any closing remarks.

Thanks, Jamie. And thanks, everyone, for your time today. I'm proud of the accomplishments we've made this year, but continue to believe the enterprise is undervalued, and we're going to be working hard to drive our strategic initiatives and operational performance for the benefit of our shareholders. Simultaneously, as you will see in our sustainability report, We intend to remain true to our values and continue to operate responsibly for the benefit of all of our stakeholders. Thank you very much for joining our call.

Ladies and gentlemen, with that, we'll conclude today's conference. We do thank you for attending. You may now disconnect your line.