Kimbell Royalty Partners LP

Greetings and welcome to the Kimbell Royalty Partners first 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. Should anyone 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. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Kimball Royalty Partners conference call to review financial and operational results for the first quarter, which ended March 31, 2026. 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 kimballrp.com. Information recorded on this call speaks only as of today, May 7, 2026. So please be advised that any time sensitive information may no longer be accurate as of the date of any replay listening or transcript reading. I would also like to remind you that the statements made in today's discussion are not historical facts, including statements of operational expectations or future events or future financial performance are considered forward-looking statements made pursuant to the Safe Harbors Revisions 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. Actual results may differ materially. Please refer to today's earnings press release for our disclosure 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 CEO. Bob?

Thank you, Rick, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us this morning. With me today are several members of our senior management team, including Davis Ravenous, our President and Chief Financial Officer, Matt Daley, our Chief Operating Officer, and Blaine Reinsberger, our Controller. To start off, we are pleased to report strong first quarter results and robust drilling activity across our acreage. Our production exceeded the midpoint of our guidance, demonstrating once again the resilience of our high quality, diversified, and low decline production base. Our active rig count remains strong with 85 rigs drilling across our acreage representing a market share of U.S. land regs at 16%. This favorable first quarter performance allowed us to declare a Q1 2026 distribution of 41 cents per common unit, up 11% from Q4 2025, as we continue to focus on returning value to unit holders. This distribution reflects an annualized tax advantage yield of approximately 11% based on yesterday's closing price. As we look to the remainder of 2026, we expect higher oil prices to support a modest uptick in activity across our oil-weighted basins. Many operators are likely to accelerate the completion of ducts to capture improved pricing while gradually increasing rig counts over time. While oil prices have been volatile in recent weeks due to macro uncertainty stemming from the Middle East conflict, They remain elevated when compared to historical levels, and we believe the current forward strip is conducive to incremental activity. We remain bullish about the U.S. oil and natural gas royalty industry and our role as a leading consolidator in the sector. We are encouraged by the opportunities in front of us and look forward to continuing our growth as we strive to expand our industry-leading portfolio of assets. I'd like to thank all of our employees for their hard work, and dedication in driving Kimball forward and for their role in helping to generate long-term unit holder value. And now I'll turn the call over to Davis.

Thanks, Bob. Good morning, everyone. As Bob mentioned, this is another strong quarter for Kimball. I'll now start by reviewing our financial results for the first quarter. Oil, natural gas, and NGO revenues totaled $82.9 million during the first quarter and run rate production was 25,522 BOE per day, which exceeded the midpoint of our guidance. On the expense side, first quarter general and administrative expenses were $9.4 million, $5.3 million of which was cash G&A expense, or $2.31 per BOE, well below our guidance range and a reflection of our continued operational discipline and positive operating leverage. Total first quarter consolidated adjusted EBITDA was 68 million. You will find a reconciliation of both consolidated adjusted EBITDA and cash available for distribution at the end of our news release. This morning, we announced a cash distribution of 41 cents per common unit for the first quarter of 2026. We estimate that approximately 72% of this distribution is expected to be return of capital and not subject to dividend taxes, further enhancing the after-tax return to our common unit holders. This represents a cash distribution payment to common unit holders that equates to 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. I'd also like to point out that during the first quarter be repurchased and canceled 500,000 units of the company's common stock for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $7.3 million at an average price of $14.60 per unit. This reflects our confidence in the underlying strength of the business and our view that the shares were trading below intrinsic value, making the repurchase an efficient use of capital while maintaining balance sheet discipline. Moving now to our balance sheet and liquidity, at March 31st, 2026, we had approximately $440.9 million in debt outstanding under our secure revolving credit facility, which represented a net debt to trailing 12-month consolidated adjusted EBITDA of approximately 1.6 times. We also had approximately 184.1 million in undrawn capacity under the secured revolving credit facility as of March 31st, 2026. We continue to maintain a conservative balance sheet and remain very comfortable with our strong financial position and enhanced flexibility. Today, we are also affirming our financial and operational guidance ranges for 2026. As a reminder, 2026 guidance outlook was included in the Q4 2025 earnings release. We remain confident about the prospects for continued development in 2026, given the number of rigs actively drilling on our acreage, especially in the Permian, as well as our line-of-sight wells exceeding our maintenance well count. In closing, we are excited about our position as a leading consolidator and the highly fragmented U.S. oil and natural gas royalty sector, which we estimate exceeds $850 billion in size. Long-term demand for U.S. energy is expected to continue to grow, and we are well-positioned to benefit through our diversified portfolio of high-quality royalty assets across the leading U.S. basins. With that, operator, we are now ready for questions.

Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please 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 keys. One moment please while we poll for questions. The first question is from Tim Resvin from KeyBank Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Good morning, folks. Thank you for taking our questions. Good morning, Tim. I want to start. I know about two-thirds of your line-of-sight wells are in the Permian and sort of a group think that that'll be the basin that would be the first mover, you know, given the call for oil globally. But I was curious kind of what you're seeing sort of elsewhere in your portfolio. Are you seeing any increases globally? in other places such as the MidCon where there's less natural gas constraints?

Yeah, absolutely. We're seeing activity. Actually, strangely enough, we're seeing an uptick in the Bakken for the first time in a while. We're seeing activity in the Eagleford. Yes, on the MidCon, which is obviously on a relative basis a larger contributor to our overall portfolio. Yes, we would expect to see the preponderance of increased activity in the Permian.

Good to know. Thank you.

And then when I last spoke with you all in March, you know, you gave the comments that your peers have echoed that higher oil prices should bring sellers to the table and help with M&A. We saw a large peer announce a sizable transaction earlier this week. So I was just wondering if we could kind of get your lay of the land on the M&A front and sort of what you're seeing and maybe what's got you excited.

Yeah, great question. There are a couple of packages in the market now. We try to look at everything that we can. We'd like to believe that we get a look at pretty much every sizable acquisition out there. Nothing imminent to report, but of course, actively evaluating opportunities. I would say that the increase in oil price, to your point, makes sellers more willing to transact. At the same time, working against that to a certain extent is the volatility. So we've seen a few groups walk away because they have a more bullish view on what oil prices are going to do versus others. So I think what we'll see happen is once we reach some sort of minimized level of volatility and people have a little bit more of an agreement between the buy side and the sell side on where where the new equilibrium is to speak, I think that's when you'll start seeing, you know, a larger volume of transactions occur.

Okay. Okay. That makes sense. And if I could sneak one last one in. You know, we noticed the repurchases in the first quarter. You know, if we see where the stock is today, it's been a tough, you know, month for the industry here. you know, it's trading below kind of the average of first quarter repurchase price. And we also see, you know, WTI at 91 here. So how are you thinking about repurchases versus debt pay down, call it in the next couple quarters?

Yeah, great question. We want to be opportunistic. We've seen periods of time where our stock is traded down for inexplicable reasons. And so we had a conversation at the management and board level about Putting a program in place, obviously we started with a relatively modest repurchase, but we do have the authorization to do something that's more meaningful. So I think we'll be opportunistic over time, trying to take advantage of inefficiencies and dislocations in our stock price where we believe that our shareholders would benefit on a long-term basis from a repurchase. I will say that we do not intend to to divert the 75% payout to our dividends for repurchases. So that would, and I know you know this, but I'm just saying this for the benefit of others on the call, it would be a trade-off between debt paid out and repurchases of our stock with the 25% component of our free cash. That's what we're going to be weighing going forward.

Okay. I appreciate the answers. Thank you.

Thank you. The next question is from Nick Armato from Texas Capital. Please go ahead.

Good morning, all, and thanks for taking my questions. Maybe for my first one, on your outlook for the remainder of the year, you delivered a strong quarter on both the oil and gas side, which puts you roughly at the midpoint for the full year guide. Do you think that there's some upsides to this, given your strong performance in the first quarter and the stronger commodity environment that we're seeing?

I do. I would like to believe that you'll see increased activity. We're certainly hearing from other operators and their comments this quarter that they expect some improvement in drilling rates over the course of this year. I think some are more in a wait-and-see approach. Others are being a little bit more aggressive. We're hearing from private operators that they're going to be more aggressive than the public operators, which has traditionally been the case historically. So yes, we try to be conservative always when issuing guidance and when reaffirming it. But I do see, just given the precipitous rise in oil prices this year, all things being equal, we may see or we could expect to see you know, increased sterling activity across our portfolio.

Perfect. Thanks for all the color. Maybe for my follow-up, how do you all generally think about the cycle times for the conversion of ducts to production and permits to ducts? And maybe more specifically, do you think the stronger commodity environment will change those timelines versus maybe six months ago?

That's a great question. I would say that historically, and I'll turn that over to Bob to add some comments. I guess I'll make one point. Traditionally, we've seen ducks come online on average within six months and permits, let's call it, up to a year. So that's how we think about it on an average basis. But to your point, probably more activity sooner rather than later, just given how quickly. And I know that's subject to... you know, internal operational issues that some of these operators have in terms of accessing, you know, the services they need. But in a higher priced environment, at least in the past, we've seen those timelines accelerate. We've also seen more rapid permitting activity in higher priced environments. And our net duck and permit inventory, by the way, doesn't even include our minor properties, which may contribute up to an additional 20% to our inventory. So, We feel very good about, you know, the near-term line of sight on development on the properties and feel even better in today's higher oil price environment that those numbers could improve and that the timelines could accelerate. But Bob, anything you'd add on development cadence in this environment?

Nope, nope. I agree with everything you said. Perfect. Super helpful.

Thanks for taking my questions. I'll turn it back to the operator.

Thank you.

This concludes the question and answer session. I would like to turn the floor back over to Bob Ravnis for closing comments.

We thank you all for joining us this morning, and we look forward to speaking with you again next quarter. This completes today's call.

This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time.