Kimbell Royalty Partners LP

Q2 2023 Earnings Conference Call

8/3/2023

speaker
Operator
Greetings, and welcome to the Kimball Royalty Partners Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Rick Black, Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.
speaker
Rick Black
Thank you, Operator, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Kimbell Royalty Partners conference call to review financial and operational results for the second quarter 2023, ended June 30th, 2023. This call is also being webcast and can be accessed through the audio link on the events and presentations page of the IR section of KimbellRP.com. Information recorded on this call speaks only as of today, August 2nd, 2023. So please be advised that any time sensitive information can no longer be accurate as of the date of any replay listening or transcript reading. I would also like to remind you that statements made in today's discussion that are not historical facts, including statements of expectations or future events or future financial performance, are considered forward-looking statements made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. We will be making forward-looking statements as part of today's call, which by their nature, are uncertain and outside of the company's control. The actual results may differ materially. Please refer to today's earnings press release for our disclosures on forward-looking statements. These factors and other risks and uncertainties are described in detail in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Management will also refer to non-GAAP measures, including adjusted EBITDA and cash available for distribution. Reconciliations to the nearest GAAP measures can be found at the end of today's earnings release. Kimball assumes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. I would now like to turn the call over to Bob Ravenous, Kimball Realty Partners Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. Bob?
speaker
Bob Ravenous
Thank you, Rick, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us on the call this morning. With me today are several members of our senior management team, including Davis Ravenous, our President and Chief Financial Officer, Matt Daly, our Chief Operating Officer, and Blaine Reinsberger, our controller. We are very pleased with another record quarter and continue to build on momentum from Q1 and the recently closed MB Minerals royalty acquisition. Notably, our Q2 production mix materially shifted towards oil, which represented 33% on a 6-to-1 basis, up from 29% in the first quarter. Activity in our acreage remains resilient, despite a lower overall U.S. land rate count. In fact, we now have the highest market share ever of the overall U.S. land rig count at 13.8%. After giving effect to our two most recent acquisitions, the Permian Basin leads all categories in terms of production, inventory, rig count, and line-of-sight wells. Production in the Permian grew by 48%, quarter over quarter, reflecting a full quarter of the MB Minerals acquisition, with the Permian rig count increasing by 11% during the same period. we're very pleased to report that we maintain a superior five-year annual PDP decline rate of 13% that only requires an estimated 4.9 net wells annually to maintain flat production. Overall, we had a great quarter and are right on track to meet our targets for the year. Our Q2 2023 distribution of 39 cents represents an increase of 11% from Q1 and demonstrates our ongoing focus and commitment to enhancing unit holder value. As we head into the second half of the years, as well as looking out toward 2024, we will continue to execute on our strategy to drive growth both through organic development and our discipline acquisition strategy that is both a consistent and proven method at Kimball. We also expect to continue benefiting from our diverse portfolio with low PDP decline rates coupled with upside drilling locations. As a major consolidator in the highly fragmented U.S. oil and natural gas royalty sector, we remain bullish about the long-term prospects in this space and our role in it. We believe the future opportunities for Kimball are very bright and will extend for many years to come. I'll now turn the call over to Davis to review our financials in more detail before we open the call to questions.
speaker
Rick
Thanks, Bob, and good morning, everyone. Kimball performed very well in the second quarter and generated record run rate daily production, surpassing a new milestone for the company of over 18,000 BOE per day on a six-to-one basis, including a full quarter of the MB Minerals acquisitions. We are also pleased to report that we have an amended and extended our secured revolving credit facility through June, 2027, and increased the borrowing base and elected commitments from 350 million to 400 million, an increase of 14%. We are also affirming our full year 2023 guidance that was previously disclosed in our May 18th press release. I'll start by reviewing our financial results from the second quarter, beginning with oil, natural gas, and NGL revenues of $57 million, a decrease of 0.8% from the first quarter, primarily due to a decline in realized commodity prices. Second quarter 2023 average daily production was 18,145 BOE per day, again, on a six-to-one basis. which consisted of 572 BOE per day related to prior period production recognized during the quarter and 17,573 BOE per day of run rate production. The prior period production recognized this quarter was attributable to past production that came into pay status during Q2, 2023. A record second quarter run rate daily production Of 17,573 BOE per day, an increase of 3.3% from Q1 2023 was comprised of 45 days of MB minerals production and was approximately 54% from natural gas and approximately 46% from liquids. And that's 33% from oil and 13% from NGLs. including a full Q2 2023 impact of the MB Minerals acquisition, the revenues from which will be received by the company, run rate production was 18,554 VOE per day. As of June 30th, 2023, Kimball's major properties had 767 gross and 3.89 net drilled but uncompleted wells, as well as 734 gross and 2.97 net permits on its acreage. This data does not include our minor properties, which we estimate can add an additional 20% to the duck and permit inventory. In addition, we exited the quarter with 90 rigs actively drilling on our acreage, and our market share of all land rigs drilling in the continental United States represents approximately 13.8%, a new record. On the expense side, general and administrative expenses for Kimball were $7.9 million in the quarter, $4.6 million of which was cash G&A expense, or $2.90 per BOE. Unit-based compensation in the second quarter, which is a non-cash G&A expense, was $3.3 million, or $2.06 per BOE, $2.06 per BOE. Second quarter net income was approximately 17.8 million. Total second quarter consolidated adjusted EBITDA was 45 million. You will find a reconciliation of both consolidated adjusted EBITDA and cash available for distribution at the end of our news release. Today we announced a cash distribution of 39 cents per common unit for the second quarter. This represents a cash distribution payment to common unit holders of 75% of cash available for distribution, and the remaining 25% will be used to pay down a portion of the outstanding borrowings under Kimball's secured revolving credit facility. Since May 2020, excluding this upcoming Q2 payment, Kimball has paid down approximately $108.6 million of outstanding borrowings under its secured revolving credit facility by allocating a portion of its cash available for distribution for debt pay down. Moving now to our balance sheet and liquidity, on June 13th, we amended our existing credit agreement to, among other things, increase the borrowing base and elected commitment amount from 350 million to 400 million on the secured revolver and extend the maturity to June 2027. As of June 30th, we had approximately $269.6 million in debt outstanding under our secured revolving credit facility. We continue to maintain a conservative approach with net debt to trailing 12-month consolidated adjusted EBITDA of 1.1 times. With approximately $130.4 million in undrawn capacity under our secured revolving credit facility, we are very comfortable with our strong financial position the support of our expanding bank syndicate, and our financial flexibility. We are very bullish about our industry and our company as we see a long horizon for continued growth and opportunities to enhance shareholder value. With that, operator, we are now ready for questions.
speaker
Operator
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we'll be conducting a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask your question, you may press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star key. Our first question comes from the line of Derek Whitfield with Stifel. Please proceed with your question.
speaker
Derek Whitfield
Thanks, and good morning, all.
speaker
Operator
Good morning, Derek.
speaker
Derek Whitfield
With my first question, I wanted to focus on your growth trajectory. Based on your improving net duck and permit inventory and your strong Q2 oil production performance, how do you see the trajectory of volumes over the next six to 12 months?
speaker
Rick
Always hard to answer that question, Derek, and we try to be conservative with our guidance. You're correct that the ratio of net ducks to permits that we have on our acreage relative to what's required to keep it flat continues to trend in a positive direction. You're further right that the Oil weighting amongst that mix continues to increase and improve. We don't like to take three to six months views on what that development cadence might be. We as mineral owners, one of the weaknesses of our business model, there aren't very many of them, but one of the weaknesses is lack of developmental control. So we've reiterated guidance, but you're certainly correct that we may be too conservative in how we're thinking about this. Matt or Andrew, Bob, anybody want to add anything?
speaker
Derek
Yeah, I would just say that that's correct. I mean, the 6.86 net ducks and permits is well above the 4.9 to stay flat. I mean, oil prices are good, so you may start to see some accelerated completions of ducks into year-end and gas as we get into Q4 with the gas curve and contango prices are higher in Q4 as well, so you may see some of that as well. But I would agree with Davis. We stand by our guidance for Q3 and Q4. which has a midpoint of production of 19,000 BW per day.
speaker
Derek Whitfield
Great. And then looking at the gas side of the ledger, your Hainesville rig activity has been particularly resilient despite lower gas prices. What do you guys attribute to that resiliency? Acreage quality, public company exposure, some combination of the two? Any thoughts you could share?
speaker
Rick
Yeah, great, great question. We were, I mean, frankly, we were positively surprised. I wouldn't use the word surprised, but we were pleased to see that, just given the fact that everybody else that seems to be reporting is seeing a lot of disappointing production declines in the basin. I would attribute it to, frankly, I think you kind of hit on it with your first points, That legacy position that we picked up from Haymaker back in 2018 is just an incredible core Haynesville asset. And we would probably argue that our production should and will continue to be more resilient than other folks. I think we have a lower PDP decline rate on our Haynesville position relative to a lot of other people too. So it doesn't require quite as much. Well, we will outperform, I should say, on balance. the more hyper drilling folks that have newer flush production with higher decline rates. So we're kind of in a nice balanced spot with a lower PDP decline rate, but still a healthy amount of activity. We got asked that question yesterday on a call and the mix between privates and publics continues to kind of shift up and down. I'm not sure I would directly attribute our resilience to our specific mix between public and privates. except in so far to say as we have a healthy mix, they're all for the most part, very good operators. And it's just a, it's just a great asset. I mean, it's just a, an asset that's kind of core to our business that just continues to perform. And we've got years and years of inventory there, which is, which is obviously a nice and very exciting thing. Anybody else want to chip in on that?
speaker
Derek
I mean, in Q1, as you pointed out, we had a, pretty large increase in the rig count of the Haynesville. It increased by six rigs in Q1, even with relatively low gas prices. And then Q2, the rig count went down slightly in the Haynesville. But as David said, I mean, the operating activity remains robust there, mainly because the economics are so strong. And a lot of these folks were able to hedge into, again, the contango curve, which has gas in the mid threes going into the fours in the future.
speaker
Derek Whitfield
And if I could maybe squeeze one more in, With regard to your decision to dissolve the Tiger Acquisition Corp in Q2, should we consider the chapter fully closed on that pursuit, or do you think there's still an opportunity longer term to pursue a symbiotic EMP and mineral relationship?
speaker
Rick
Yeah, great question. Thank you for asking that. No, the idea is not dead. The idea in its form, which was the SPAC form under Tiger, that has concluded. But we still are very interested in building our own operating company to work alongside Kimball or partnering with another operating company just to realize, well, really to address your first question, which is lack of developmental insight. It would just be wonderful to have a relationship with an operator where we could have more transparency on development cadence, but then also joint bid acquisitions that either have high net revenue interests where an override could be carved out appropriately, and or a situation where a working interest partner actually owns the mineral ownership and also owns the working interest. So we still think the idea has a lot of merit, and it's something that we would love to do. So I wouldn't put the final nail in the coffin on that by any means.
speaker
Derek Whitfield
Very helpful. Thanks for your time.
speaker
Operator
Thank you for your questions. Our next question comes from the line of Trafford Lamar with Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.
speaker
Lamar
Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question. I kind of wanted to piggyback off of Derek's rig question. You know, obviously, you all saw a very smaller decrease relatively to the quarter of a quarter relatively to the U.S. total. And, you know, I want to ask on Permian specifically about, you know, kind of how rigs fell quarter over quarter, and if you all saw, you know, similar levels from 1Q to 2Q there.
speaker
Derek
Yeah, I'll take that. This is Matt. I mean, the Permian rig count went up by five rigs quarter over quarter. We had 50 rigs out of the 90 were in the Permian Basin, as you're correct. The market share went up from 12.8% to 13.8%, the highest market share ever for the company. The Eagle for rig count went up quarter per quarter. We did see a drop of four in the Haynesville, not surprisingly due to low gas prices. But in the Permian specifically, the major operators, ExxonMobil has nine rigs, Oxy has five rigs, Diamondback has four rigs. Overall, on our rig count for all basins, 63% of those are public companies. During the pandemic, it was actually 63%, 65% private companies. And now the public companies have come back and sort of running the show here. But again, very happy to see that the rig count, you know, modestly dropped. Market share went up. Permian's very, very strong in terms of activity with some leading operators. So this shows the resilience and the quality of our acreage.
speaker
Lamar
Great. Appreciate the color on that. Guys, slightly off topic. The one talking point as of late has been partnership to C-Corp conversion, and I'd love to get your thoughts on this, specifically from potential index exposure standpoint.
speaker
Rick
Yeah, so we converted to a C-Corp, as you know, for tax purposes a couple years ago. We think that's been a positive development. Would always consider anything that makes sense for our company and our unit holders, but we are very happy with our structure, and we believe that The structure we have in place allows us to make decisions very quickly and very easily. And I think that helps explain, frankly, our just really good success over the last several years on the M&A front. We've made a number of acquisitions that have really helped the company and grown us exponentially. So happy with our structure, but certainly aware of that phenomenon.
speaker
Lamar
Yeah, that totally makes sense. Thank you, guys.
speaker
Operator
Thank you. There are no further questions in the queue. I'd like to hand the call back over to Bob Ravenous for closing remarks.
speaker
Bob Ravenous
We thank you all for joining us this morning, and we look forward to speaking with you again when we report third quarter results. This completes today's call.
speaker
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's teleconference. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and have a wonderful day.
Disclaimer

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

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