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Operator
Good day, everyone, and welcome to the Blackstone Minerals 3Q earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, you will have the opportunity to ask questions during the question-and-answer session. You may register to ask a question at any time by pressing star 1 on your telephone keypad. You may withdraw yourself from the queue by pressing star 2. Please note, this call is being recorded. I will be standing by if you should need any assistance. At this time, it is my pleasure to turn the conference over to the Director of Finance, Mark Moe. Please go ahead.
Mark Moe
Mark Moe Thank you. Good morning to everyone. Thank you for joining us either by phone or online for Blackstone Minerals Third Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. Today's call is being recorded and will be available on our website along with the earnings release which was issued last night. Before we start, I'd like to advise you that we will be making forward-looking statements during this call about our plans, expectations, and assumptions regarding our future performance. These statements involve risks that may cause our actual results to differ materially from the results expressed or implied in our forward-looking statements. For discussion of these risks, you should refer to the cautionary information about forward-looking statements in our press release from yesterday and the risk factors section of our 2022 10Ks. we may refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures that we believe are useful in evaluating our performance. Reconciliation of those measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measure and other information about these non-GAAP metrics are described in our earnings press release from yesterday, which can be found on our website at www.blackstoneminerals.com. Joining me on the call today from the company are Tom Carter, Chairman, CEO, and President, Evan Keeper, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer, Terry Clark, Senior Vice President, Land and Commercial, Steve Putman, Senior Vice President and General Counsel, and Thad Montgomery, Vice President Land.
Mark Moe
I'll now turn the call over to Tom. Thank you, Mark. Good morning, and thanks for joining us for our third quarter 23 results. We posted a solid quarter with adjusted EBITDA of $130 million for the quarter, an increase of 19% compared to the second quarter. This is now the sixth consecutive quarter where Blackstone has generated over $100 million in adjusted EBITDA. We generated total production volumes for the third quarter of 42.6 thousand BOE per day. an increase of 18% from our second quarter volumes. And now we expect to be in the upper end of our production guidance range of 37 to 39,000 BOE per day. Much of the increase was driven by royalty volumes, which increased 20% from the second quarter to 40.3,000 BOE per day and 8% above the third quarter of 22. Primary driver of oil volumes was new wells coming online in the Permian. Additionally, we had six new wells come online in the third quarter in the Shelby Trough. Two of those were ATON and four were XPO. Despite the lower rig counts in the Louisiana Hainesville this year due to lower pricing, we continue to see activity from new wells resulting in our Louisiana Hainesville volumes increasing 13% compared to the second quarter. Athon continues to ramp up production in the Shelby Trough and held the six rigs on location at the end of the third quarter, increasing from five rigs in the second quarter. To date, 28 wells have been turned to sales in the Shelby Trough under our development agreement with Athon. And there are currently 35 wells in the drilling completion phase, which exceeds the minimum pace of 27 wells per year. Angelina and San Augustine counties that we expect to benefit our production in 2024. We saw a 4% increase in rigs operating on our acreage in the third quarter. The increase driven by Haynesville and Gulf Coast with 76 rigs currently running as of September 30th. Throughout the quarter, we saw rig count peak at 90 in August due to new drilling in the Permian from various operators. u.s rig count has contracted approximately six percent during the quarter which highlights the natural ebbs and flows of development on a diversified acreage position such as ours we previously announced that we are maintaining our distribution of 47.5 cents per unit or a dollar ninety on an annualized basis and a report and reported yesterday And as reported yesterday, it represents a 1.25 times coverage for the quarter. Despite the challenges with natural gas prices, we've been able to maintain a strong balance sheet through the year and hold the distribution at its highest level since going public. Additionally, we have put into place a $150 million unit repurchase program that replaces our previous $75 million programs. This will allow us the flexibility and ability to opportunistically buy our own units. It's been a great year, and we're encouraged by the positive momentum into the end of the year. Yesterday, we announced Evan Kiefer has been appointed as Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer, removing the interim in his title. With over 10 years of experience with Blackstone, I congratulate him on this position. With that, I'll turn it over to Evan to walk through the details of the quarter. Evan? Perfect.
Tom
Thank you, Tom, and good morning to everyone. As Tom pointed out, we had a very good third quarter. We reported average daily production of 42.6 thousand VOE per day, which is an increase of 18% over reported second quarter production. This was led by production from new wells coming online in the Permian, as well as better than expected results in the Hainesville, in the Shelby Trough, and Louisiana. Lease bonus and other income for the quarter was $2.2 million for the third quarter and $8.7 million for the first three quarters of the year. While we have emphasized development programs over lease bonus, we remain encouraged by continued leasing activity in the Hainesville-Bossier despite the lower price environment this year compared to 2022. And speaking of pricing, we saw a recovery in oil prices in the third quarter with realized prices of approximately $78 per barrel and $2.90 per MCF. That represents an increase of 8% and 1% in oil and gas prices compared to the second quarter, respectively. For comparison, during the third quarter of 2022, average price of oil was over $90 per barrel and over $8 per MCF. The current quarter represents a 17% decrease in crude prices and 65% decrease in natural gas prices from this period last year, and continues to highlight why we hedge our near-term production volumes. We have a solid hedge book that brought in approximately $24 million of realized cash settlements for the quarter, with approximately 55% of our production hedged for the remainder of 2023, with natural gas hedged at a little over $5 per MCF. In 2024, we have continued to add to our hedge portfolio with a target of approximately 70% of our estimated production by the end of the year. This results in our adjusted EBITDA for the quarter of $130 million, which is up 19% from the second quarter and rivals our high watermark that was set in the fourth quarter of 2022. Yesterday, we announced our updated guidance that reflects the strong quarter and positive trends that we are seeing. As Tom mentioned, the production guidance that we expect to come in at the upper end of our guidance range for 2023, while expecting lease operating expenses and production costs to remain in line with our expectations. Additionally, we expect G&A, cash and non-cash to be in the lower end of our guidance range. We previously announced the distribution of 47.5 cents per unit, or $1.90 per unit on an annualized basis. The tributary cash flow for the quarter was $124.4 million, and this results in a distribution coverage for the third quarter of 1.25 times. This is now the fourth consecutive quarter where we have ended the quarter with no borrowings on our revolver, and as of last week, we had over $90 million of cash prior to payment of the distribution next month. Effective yesterday, we increased our borrowing rates from $550 million to $580 million due to an increase in commodity prices, but we have elected to hold commitments flat at $375 million. As Tom mentioned, our board approved a $150 million unit repurchase program. While we will continue to prioritize returning cash to our investors, this allows us to opportunistically repurchase our common units. With the low gas price environment today and LNG export capacity expected to increase into 2025, we are bullish on our long-term gas exposure and do not think the current unit valuation at approximately 10.5% yield fully reflects that view. Additionally, the first redemption window for our preferred units opens at the end of next month. This unit repurchase program gives us the flexibility to potentially repurchase common units, which trades at a discount to that contractual redemption price of 105% afar or just over $21 per unit. Repurchasing common units allows us the opportunity to reduce any potential dilution should those units convert into common in the future, as well as offset any increased interest rate that goes into effect at the end of next month. Just as a reminder, that rate reset from 7% to the 10-year plus 550 basis points, or approximately 10.4% based on current rates. I'll echo Tom's comments, and there's a great quarter. And with that, we will open the call for comments.
Operator
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, if you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. If you would like to remove yourself from the question queue, you may do so by pressing star 2. Once again, that's star 1 to ask a question and star 2 to remove yourself. We will pause for just a moment to assemble the question queue. We'll take our first question from Tim Resvan with KeyBank Capital Markets.
Tim Resvan
Good morning, folks. Thanks for taking my questions and having congratulations on the permanent role. I guess I'll start with the repurchases. I'm just trying to understand kind of the rationale behind that. You talked about a 10B51, and then you also talked about offsetting dilution. So should we assume you will be active this quarter? Is the 10B51 in place? Or do you Is that something you may put in place? I'm just trying to understand kind of the rationale behind the repurchase decision now.
Tom
Yeah, nothing is in place right now. This just gives us the flexibility and the opportunity to repurchase units going forward. One of the things we really were looking at is the overall principal value on the preferred units being par at a little over $20 and at 105% today puts it at $21.41 per unit. And since those are convertible one-to-one in the common, and with the yield going to, you know, call it 10.5% on our common units and 10% on the preferred, just gives us a little bit of that discount to the common units, which we like relative to the preferred.
Tim Resvan
Okay. Okay. And I guess if you do have another month to decide what you're going to do with the preferreds, you know, you obviously have a little bit of a cash balance building. will that be something that you will disclose to the marketplace if you do decide to regain some or all of them?
Tom
Yes, that is correct. Yeah, and we have $90 million today on the balance sheet. Really, that's going to be paid out as far as the distribution in the middle of next month. But, you know, as we go forward, thinking about the – potential redemption of the common or of the preferred or um redeeming any common units that'll most likely just be used out of any cash that we build through coverage or we have the the line of credit that's currently unused with 375 million of cash commitments today okay okay so you have to have options um okay i appreciate that and if i could just i just need one last one in obviously a very strong production number you know the the
Tim Resvan
the modest revision of guidance saying you'll be at the upper end infers some sort of decline in fourth quarter production. Can you talk about kind of what you're seeing and, you know, why we shouldn't think that, you know, you'll be above that 39,000 a day for the year? Just trying to think about the kind of the near-term cadence of production.
Tom
Yeah, of course, Pam, and thanks for the question. Yeah, you know, when we model our forecast and look forward, we typically just model what we have very clean visibility and line of sight into. So that's going to be based off of any feedback we receive from operators, from permits and drilling activity that we see on our acreage. And so whenever we look into, you know, our results for the third quarter, that was all from new wells that we saw drilled at the beginning of the year. With the lower rig count and the hang fill, we see some challenges there going forward and expect overall production, although it was up for the quarter, to still remain fairly flat going into next year. But, you know, there's always... things that occur on a large diversified position such as ours that we don't necessarily have that clean visibility into and so because we model what we see and have that visibility into you know there's that inherent conservatism built into our views. You know, right now with where we see the program going and where we see, you know, with the drill pace and everything, there is that decrease from current volumes into the fourth quarter, but we're still encouraged and optimistic as to what volumes can go into next year and beyond.
Tim Resvan
Okay. Thanks for the responses. Thank you.
Operator
Once again, ladies and gentlemen, that's star one for questions. We'll go next to Derek Whitfield with Stiefel.
Derek Whitfield
Good morning, Dawn. Congrats, Evan, on your well-earned role. Thank you. Following up on Tim's question, given the strength of your oil production in the quarter, could you help frame how much of that increase was for prior quarter activity versus underlying growth? Yeah.
Tom
Based off of the production that we saw in the third quarter, all of that was really, or at least the vast majority of that, was from wells that were drilled in 2023. The actual breakdown between what was in the current quarter versus production that we received from prior periods,
Derek Whitfield
um going to be a smaller portion or smaller piece of that but like I said the majority of the increase in oil volumes from this quarter was all really drilled in 2023. and with regard to the 28 Angelina County ASEAN Wells that are in various stages of development could you help frame the splits on where they lie in development and your expectations on when the wells will be turned in line
Tom
Yeah. So, you know, we have through that agreement certain criteria that requires them to drill and complete those wells. Whenever we look at what the wells are currently being in the drilling phase, that may include wells that are on the same pad. That's going to be on average call it 10 months from initial drill to turn in line um going forward and so we would expect to see those wells coming online most likely in the the middle of next year i'll just i'll just add something to that statement um athon is is really doing a great job out there in the shelby trough and
Mark Moe
They have a growing program out there and some of the metrics around timing that we built into our contract some two or three years ago are morphing as multi-pad development wells become more common and the program is likely to expand. So we may see a little bit more lumpiness in turning to sales because they're doing more wells at once, and it takes longer to get a full set of them up and ready to turn on. But we see that as positive, and we really look to work closely with Athon on all of that.
Derek Whitfield
And perhaps staying with you for one last follow-up, if I could, I know your focus in recent years has been on organic conversion opportunities. Having said that, how would you characterize the current state of the M&A market and your desire to participate in that?
Mark Moe
Well, I'll answer that this way. The overall M&A market is pretty frothy in terms of valuations, I would say. but we think there continue to be more opportunities than we would have said we saw a year or two ago, but we are trying to look in places where maybe other people aren't looking.
Derek Whitfield
Terrific. Thanks for your time. Thank you, Derek.
Operator
At this time, I will turn the conference back over to our presenters for any additional or closing comments.
Mark Moe
Well, thank you all for joining us today. We're pretty optimistic with the pace and activity levels that we're seeing and our ability to continue to grow our platform, and we look forward to talking to you again next quarter.
Operator
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude today's program. You may disconnect at this time.
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