Gulfport Energy Corporation

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Gulfport Energy Corporation's third quarter 2022 earnings call. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. Should you require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero to signal an operator. Please note this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Jessica Antle. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you and good morning. Welcome to Gulfport Energy Corporation's third quarter 2022 earnings conference call. I am Jessica Antle, Director of Investor Relations. Tim Cutt, Gulfport's Chief Executive Officer, will not be on today's call due to a family emergency. Bill Beezy, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, will provide today's scripted remarks and will be joined by Michael Sluder, Senior Vice President of Reservoir Engineering and RJ Moses, Senior Vice President of Operations and Drilling, for the Q&A portion of the call. I would like to remind everybody that during this conference call, the participants may make certain forward-looking statements relating to the company's financial condition, results of operations, plans, objectives, future performance, and business. We caution you that actual results could differ materially from those that are indicated in these forward-looking statements due to a variety of factors. Information concerning these factors can be found in the company's filings with the SEC. In addition, we may reference non-GAAP measures. Reconciliations to the comparable GAAP measures will be posted on our website. An updated Goldport presentation was posted yesterday evening to our website in conjunction with the earnings announcement. Please review at your leisure. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Bill.

Thanks, Jessica, and good morning, everyone. I'll begin this morning with a brief summary of third quarter highlights, followed by an operational update in both of our asset areas. I will then provide a high-level overview of our third quarter financial results, liquidity position, return of capital initiatives, and address the guidance updates provided in yesterday's earnings announcement. The third quarter marked the most active period of our 2022 operational plan, with us investing a total of $141 million of capital between our two operating areas. Our production averaged 915 million cubic feet equivalent per day for the quarter, which is down from the second quarter, primarily due to the timing of our development program, but was in line with our expectations. Our financial position remains strong, and we exited the quarter with a leverage ratio of 0.9 times and liquidity of more than $400 million. We continue to execute on our share repurchase program and have repurchased approximately $233 million year to date, decreasing our outstanding common share count by 10% and utilizing a significant percentage of forecasted 22 free cash flow. Alongside yesterday's earnings announcement, we also issued our 2022 corporate sustainability report. The report is a direct reflection of Gulfport's continuous improvement culture, and we are very proud of the progress made on several fronts, including reducing our greenhouse gas and methane emissions. We strive to reduce our environmental footprint, and as part of the analysis, we are conducting a formal gap assessment to improve our company practices and policies regarding emissions management. This analysis will also assess the measures required to comply with the monitoring requirements for gas certification. We look forward to continuing to share our ESG journey with you and believe the CSR will serve as an important resource for investors in the future. Turning now to production, as shown on slide nine, our base production and 2022 development wells continue to perform at or above expectations. Year-to-date, our base production has outperformed our forecast by roughly 7%, with both the Utica and Scoop performing above expectations. Our 2022 five-well Nelda pad in the Scoop has outperformed its forecast by over 80% year-to-date, and in aggregate, our 2022 Utica development wells are performing at a peer-leading average EUR of 2.2 BCFE per 1,000 foot of lateral. Our third quarter turn-in lines, several of which occurred in late September, coupled with the additional wells we plan to bring online during the fourth quarter, will result in over 15% quarter-over-quarter production growth, which allows us to reiterate our previously provided annual production guidance. Turning to our 2022 development program, during the third quarter, we completed 18 wells across both operating areas. In the Utica, we turned in line seven wells, and are projecting to bring five additional wells online during the fourth quarter. We continue to execute our water space development program utilizing right size completions and as shown on slide 11 of the IR deck, we now have a significant number of wells completed under this optimized design that are showing increased recovery factors when compared to our 1,000 foot spaced wells in the play. This illustrates the benefit of our current approach where every well is optimized for both placement and completion design resulting in better overall recovery efficiencies. The recent results include our four-well extreme pad, brought online in late September, which are performing at a current average EUR of 2.2 BCFE per thousand foot of lateral. The increase in recovery factors in EURs per well favorably impacts our development cost per MCFE of reserves developed. Our 2022 cost for MCFE of reserves developed has increased approximately 3% over 2021, but the 2022 costs include the impact of approximately 25% of inflation on our DNC capital, so we are pleased with our continued progress on this front. Furthermore, despite these inflationary pressures, we believe our target of 50 cents for MCFE remains achievable using wider spacing and more intense frac jobs in 2023 and beyond. We have updated the charts on slide 12 to include the results of our recent wells. We are currently running one rig in the Utica and to improve the efficiency of our 2023 development program, we have elected to add a top hole rig during the fourth quarter of 2022, which will allow us to begin drilling seven additional wells in the Utica before year end. We currently expect to continue with this top hole rig for roughly half of 2023 before we return to one continuous rig for the balance of the year. This level of activity should allow us to execute a continuous eight-month FRAC program in the Utica, eliminating the risk of releasing crews in today's tight service market and providing the opportunity for increased efficiencies and cost savings. Turning to the scoop, we turned in line two wells during the third quarter and plan to bring online an incremental six wells during the fourth quarter. On slide 14 of the IR deck, you can see how our Nelda pad has continued to outperform expectations and is now expected to remain on flat time production for nearly eight months. Slide 15 illustrates the significant improvement in development costs and well performance generated by these Nelda wells. We plan to return to drilling in the Scoop with one rig in January of 23, and as we have done in the Utica to improve the efficiency of our drilling program, we plan to run the rig continuously throughout the year. We anticipate this will result in a similar number of wells drilled and drilling capital as compared to 22, However, our completion program will not begin until midway through the year, resulting in less wealth brought online in the scoop during 2023. Turning now to our third quarter financial results, we reported a net loss of $18 million and generated $173 million of adjusted EBITDA during the third quarter. A key driver of the net loss was $109 million unrealized loss associated with our commodity derivatives portfolio. Net cash provided by operating activities totaled $168 million during the third quarter, and we generated free cash flow of $11 million for the same period. Despite the third quarter being negatively impacted by basis differentials that were wider than our guidance, we were still able to generate positive free cash flow for the quarter and have now done so in every quarter since our emergence from bankruptcy in May of 21. Moving on to derivatives, we believe that our 2023 natural gas production is appropriately covered as we move into the new year. As of the end of the third quarter, we had nearly 50% of our 23 natural gas production covered through a combination of swaps and collars at an average floor price of $3.19 per MCF, which is more than 50 cents higher than our 2022 average floor price. We also have a sole call position in 23 covering a portion of our expected production. We will continue to opportunistically enter into additional derivative contracts for 2024 and beyond in future quarters when appropriate. Turning to our balance sheet, at the end of the third quarter, total assets were approximately $2.5 billion, while total gross debt was approximately $729 million, consisting of $179 million outstanding under our credit facility and $550 million of outstanding senior notes. We also had $8 million of cash on hand and $113 million of letters of credit outstanding at the end of the quarter. We exited the third quarter with $416 million of total liquidity consisting of $8 million of cash and $408 million of borrowing capacity under our revolver. We believe our annual free cash flow generation, borrowing capacity under the facility, and cash on hand will provide sufficient liquidity to fund our operations, capital expenditures, and any return of capital to shareholder initiatives during the next 12 months. We continue to prioritize the return of capital to shareholders through our common stock repurchase program during the third quarter. During the quarter, we repurchased approximately 750,000 common shares at an average price of $85.69 for a total cost of $64 million. As of October 27th, we had repurchased approximately 2.7 million shares of common stock at an average share price of $87.37, totaling $233 million since the inception of our $300 million share repurchase program. Looking ahead, we still have approximately $67 million remaining on our buyback authorization, which provides us with the necessary dry powder to repurchase additional shares at extremely attractive valuations going forward. We will continue to evaluate all return of capital options and expect to return the 2023 free cash flow not utilized in any organic growth or acquisition-related activities to shareholders while maintaining a conservative leverage ratio. Moving on to guidance, for the reasons and benefits I mentioned earlier, including the addition of the top hole rig in the Utica, Gulfport now expects to invest approximately $415 million on DNC capital during 22. This, along with $35 million of land capital, takes our capital guidance to approximately $450 million for the year. We have also updated guidance for our expected realized natural gas differential before hedges to between $0.30 and $0.40 off NYMEX from a previous range of 15 to 25 cents off NYMEX. The widening basis differential is driven by actual settled prices during the months of September and October, which were lower than our original forecast, as well as current expectations for the remainder of the fourth quarter of 22. The primary factors contributing to the weaker differentials included weakened demand due to weather, LNG facility outage and maintenance, a pipeline force in Appalachia, and the disruption from Hurricane Ian on the Gulf Coast. All of this occurred right as contracts were settling, creating significant pressure on first of month bid week pricing. While the recent volatility has impacted our prices near term, based on the current strip and pricing at the basis points where we sell our natural gas, we currently forecast our basis differentials to be back within the range of 15 to 25 cents off NYMEX in 2023. Our midstream line item, which includes transportation, gathering, processing, and compression, came in above the high end of our guidance in the third quarter, largely driven by timing of production volumes and minimum volume commitments in the Utica. We anticipate that the increase in production volumes during the fourth quarter will bring us back in line with our guidance, and we currently forecast 2022 full year will be at the top end of the previously provided range of $0.96 to $1 per NCFE. The combination of the adjustments mentioned above, plus a decrease in forward natural gas strip, has impacted our free cash flow guidance and we now expect to generate approximately $300 million for the full year of 22 at strip pricing. You can see a complete summary of our 2022 guidance on slide 17 of our IR deck. We continue to finalize the details of our 2023 plan, but assuming roughly one and a half rigs in the Utica, and a continuous rig program in the Scoop, we are currently forecasting a less than 5% increase in DNC capital in 23 when compared to 22. This level of spend is expected to result in an increase in production of more than 5% over the midpoint of our 22 production guidance. On the land front, to stay ahead of our continuous rig programs while building inventory into the future, we currently anticipate increasing our leasehold spend by approximately $20 million in 23 when compared to 22. In summary, despite our busiest operational quarter, which resulted in our highest capital quarter of the year and lower than expected realized natural gas differences in pricing, we still delivered another quarter of positive free cash flow. This continued positive financial momentum allowed us to execute our share repurchase program throughout the third quarter while still maintaining a conservative leverage ratio. We are confident that our strong asset base will continue to support our ability to generate free cash flow in the future quarters at a wide range of commodity prices, allowing us to continue to return capital to shareholders, all while maintaining a strong financial position. With that, we will now open the call up for discussion. Questions?