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spk00: You need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing star, then zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on a touch-tone phone. To withdraw a question, please press star, then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Brian Correos. Please go ahead.
spk01: Thank you, Operator, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Magnolia Oil and Gas's fourth quarter and full year 2020 earnings conference call. Participating on the call today are Steve Chazen, Magnolia's chairman, president, and chief executive officer, and Chris Stavros, executive vice president and chief financial officer. As a reminder, today's conference call contains certain projections and other forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal security laws. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in these statements. Additional information on risk factors that could cause results to differ is available in the company's annual report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC. A full safe harbor can be found in Slide 2 of the conference call slide presentation with the supplemental data on our website. You can download Magnolia's fourth quarter 2020 earnings press release as well as the conference call slides from the investor section of the company's website at www.magnoliaoilgas.com. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Steve Chazen.
spk05: Thank you, Brian. Good morning, and thank you for joining us today. My comments this morning will focus on how we plan to employ the characteristics of our business model to drive shareholder returns and update you on our gettings, drilling progress, and activity. Chris will review our fourth quarter and full year results, including year-end 2020 reserves, provide some additional guidance before we take your questions. When starting the company a few years ago, we developed a business model with characteristics that we thought would appeal to generalist investors. The model was supported by maintaining low financial leverage, philosophy of disciplined capital spending sufficient for moderate growth, while generating significant and consistent free cash flow and strong pre-tax margins. We limit our capital spending to within 60% of our EBITDAX, which also helps instill financial discipline throughout the organization. The chart on slide four of the conference call presentation shows how we've allocated our operating cash flow since our inception in 2018. While drilling completion capital has averaged 60 percent, most of the remaining 40 percent of the unallocated cash flow has been used to enhance value on a per share basis, either through acquiring small bolts on oil and gas properties or repurchasing our shares. We've also built a significant amount of cash over this period. Last quarter, I indicated that we end the year with a cash flow balance around $200 million. Since this has now been reached, we no longer need to continue to build cash, and as a result, more cash will be available for share enhancing activities. The guiding principle within our business model of limiting drilling, completions, and infrastructure spending to within 60% of adjusted EBITDAX will not change. We expect that most of the unallocated cash flow will continue to be used either for acquiring small full-time property or repurchasing Magnolia shares. In the absence of acquisitions, the available cash flow would be used to repurchase our shares. We repurchased 2.4 million shares in the fourth quarter, approximately 1% of our total shares outstanding. We plan generally to continue this pace of share repurchases, which will reduce our overall share count by 4% each year. Aligned with this plan, our board recently increased our share repurchase authorization by an additional 10 million shares, and we currently have approximately 13.5 million shares available for repurchase under the authorization. Just for clarity, we view the 1% as not the cap in this, but it could be, depending on the stock price and how much cash we have, it could be more than the 1% per quarter. In addition to these value-enhancing activities, Magnolia intends to begin paying a cash dividend in mid-2021. The first small fixed semiannual dividend will be paid after announcing our second quarter results. The second payment will include the fixed dividend, plus a variable component to be paid around this time next year based on the full year 2020 financial results combined with the current business outlook. The total cash dividend outlook outlays will be capped at 50% of annual reported net income. Initiating a cash dividend at this time demonstrates our overall confidence in executing our business plan and the strength of our underlying assets. The dividend is also an additional element of our plan to focus on share enhancing activities. This will continue to allow us to deliver moderate production growth while spending within 60% of our cash flow while providing flexibility to allocate the remaining unallocated cash flow in a manner that is most accretive to shareholder value. Turning to our operations, we made significant strides last year in advancing the Giddings asset from appraisal mold to a multi-well pad development. Turning to slide five of the presentation, our Giddings asset reached record production levels in the fourth quarter. Total production in Giddings increased 39%, with oil production rising 70% on a sequential quarterly basis. Results in the fourth quarter are still in the early stages of reflecting how development would look like for this asset. Efficiencies for both drilling and completing wells continues to improve, resulting in faster cycle times and lower overall well costs. To date, we have drilled two or three wells per pad. Going forward, our plan is to increase some pads to four wells, and we may consider a few larger pads. This should help continue to improve efficiency in the field. We expect total well costs to average approximately $6 million during this year. Importantly, well productivity continues to improve. The six new wells we brought online in the fourth quarter in our initial core area performed better than the average of the previous 14 wells drilled in this area. With a total of 20 wells online for the last 90 days in the 70,000-acre initial core area, these wells have averaged 840 barrels a day of oil, and 4.7 million cubic feet of gas a day. This production rate has increased by 4% from the prior level of 783 barrels of oil per day and 4.6 million cubic feet of gas per day for the previous 14 wells. Additionally, we completed two wells in Giddings located in an area about 20 miles away from our initial core area that were expected at the time to be gassier. These wells had an average 90-day production rate of 550 43 barrels of oil a day, and 7.3 million cubic feet of gas per day. While these wells did prove to be gassier, the amount of oil production was better than we originally estimated. This area could provide for additional high return development potential over time. Although product prices have improved significantly from 2020 levels, the discipline policy around our capital spending remains unchanged. We're currently running one development rig in the initial core area at Giddings. The approved efficiency of Giddings has provided us with the ability to drill at a pace of 20 to 24 wells per year. This is basically twice what we were running last year. We also plan to complete 10 operated ducts in the Carnes area, mainly during the first half of the year, and are expecting a modest increase in our non-operated activity in Carnes. Our 2021 D&C capital is expected to be between 50% and 60% of our adjusted EBITDAX. Although at current product prices, spending is likely to be in the lower half of this range. I think I could say that we're running way behind that 50% level this quarter and probably into the second quarter too. So as we build out in the back half of the year, it's going to be difficult to catch up. In summary, we ended 2020 with a very strong operational financial performance, providing us with solid operational momentum that should benefit us during 2021. We are optimistic on the outlook for a full year of development at Giddings. We remain focused on activities that enhance our per unit metrics while further lowering our F&D costs and reducing our G&A costs to improve our pre-tax margins and earnings per share. Our plan to spend 50% to 60% of our adjusted EBITDAx on drilling and completing wells is expected to result in mid-single-digit year-over-year production growth. A combination of mid-single-digit organic growth and reducing our share count by 4% a year would result in production per share growth of approximately 10% per year. That doesn't include the dividend payment. I'll now turn the call over to Chris.
spk04: Thank you, Steve, and good morning, everyone. As Steve mentioned, I plan to review some high-level points from the fourth quarter results and convey some thoughts around our year-end 2020 approved reserves and provide some guidance for 2021 before turning it over for questions. Starting on slide six, Magnolia's fourth quarter 2020 financial and operating results were very strong. The company generated total adjusted net income of $39 million or 15 cents per diluted share and well ahead of consensus estimates. Fourth quarter reported net income was 16 cents a share. Our adjusted EBITDAX was $98 million in the fourth quarter with total drilling and completion capital of approximately $40 million. DNC capital represented 40% of our adjusted EBITDAX for the quarter and as a percentage was better than our earlier guidance due to stronger production, higher product prices, improved DNC costs and giddings, and lower non-op capital. DNC capital for the full year of 2020 was 58% of adjusted EBITDAX and in keeping with our business model despite the much weaker product prices during the year. Magnolia started bringing wells online during the fourth quarter after an eight-month hiatus due to much weaker product prices last year. Total fourth quarter production grew 12% sequentially to 60.6 thousand barrels of oil equivalent per day. Production in Giddings grew 39% sequentially, with oil production in Giddings growing 70%. Total production exceeded the high end of our earlier guidance as did production at Giddings due to better than expected well performance. Looking at the quarterly cash flow waterfall chart on slide seven, we began the fourth quarter with $149 million of cash and generated $90 million of cash flow from operations before changes in working capital. During the quarter, we sold our equity interest in the Ironwood Gathering System at Carnes for cash proceeds of $27 million. The transaction has no impact to our operating or transportation costs at Carnes. Our DNC capital including leasehold costs was $41 million during the quarter. We repurchased 2.4 million shares of our common stock during the fourth quarter for $16 million, or approximately 1% of our total shares outstanding. Including the recent additional 10 million shares authorized for repurchase by our board, we currently have 13.5 million shares remaining under the total repurchase authorization. We generated $44 million of free cash flow during the fourth quarter and ended the year with $193 million of cash on the balance sheet. As Steve discussed and based on the expected uses of our free cash during the year, including small, including potential small bolt-on property acquisitions, share of purchases and a dividend payment mid-year, we do not plan to build significant amounts of cash during 2021. Our $400 million of gross debt is reflected in our senior notes, which do not mature until 2026, and we do not expect to issue any new debt. Magnolia has an undrawn $450 million revolving credit facility, and our nearly $650 million of total liquidity is more than ample to execute our business plan. Our condensed balance sheet liquidity as of year end 2020 are shown on slides eight and nine. Turning to slide 10 and looking at our unit costs and full cycle margins, Our total adjusted cash costs, including interest, are under $11 per BOE. Our DD&A rate has declined to roughly $8 per BOE, helped by Giddings well costs, which have declined by almost 30% as we were drilling wells twice as fast compared to a year ago levels. Well productivity at Giddings has continued to improve, and so we're seeing better results with lower costs, as is evident through our lower F&D costs. Our full cycle costs for the fourth quarter of $18.75 per BOE declined by 42% compared to last year's fourth quarter. Our full cycle margins doubled in the most recent quarter compared to fourth quarter 2019 and despite lower product prices. We would expect our margins to rise significantly based on current product prices and maintaining a full cycle cost structure at around the current levels. Turning to our year-end 2020 reserves and DNC costs on slide 11, Magnolia had a very successful organic drilling program during last year. The drilling program added 30.4 million barrels of oil equivalent after adjusting for acquisitions and excluding price-related revisions. Our 2020 capital for drilling and completing wells totaled 195 million in 2020, resulting in approved developed F&D costs of $6.41 per BOE and replacing 135% of our 2020 production. This F&D level is supportive of our current DD&A rate for our asset base. Turning to guidance for the full year of 2021, we continue to expect our total capital spending for drilling completions and facilities to be between 50 to 60% of our adjusted EBITDAX for the year. As Steve noted, at current product prices, our percentage of capital outlays would likely be at the lower portion of that range. We expect to run one operated rig in Giddings and plan to drill and complete between 20 to 24 wells during the year on multi-well pads and primarily in our initial core area. We plan to complete 10 ducts in the Carnes area, most of which should be brought online during the first half of the year. Non-operated activity at Carnes is expected to increase modestly compared to 2020 levels. We produced 61.8 thousand BOE per day during last year and our 2021 capital and activity plan is expected to deliver mid single digit production growth on a year over year basis. Our fully diluted share count of approximately 255 million shares in the fourth quarter of 2020 declined by nearly 3% from the prior year. We would expect our fully diluted shares to continue to decline through this year as we repurchase our shares. The combination of mid-single-digit organic production growth and the continued reduction in our fully diluted shares is expected to result in production per share growth of approximately 10% this year. Looking at the first quarter, we expect our DNC capital to be approximately 50% of our adjusted EBITDAX, although Steve said it's running a bit lower right now. The majority of our operated activity during the quarter will continue to be focused on Giddings. In Carnes, We plan to start completing some of the ducts in the latter part of the current quarter with most of the production benefits seen in the second quarter. Production in the first quarter is estimated to be approximately the same as the fourth quarter levels, which incorporates a rough estimate of downtime due to recent impacts of cold weather in the field. In addition to the weather-related impact on production, we're also likely to see a modest amount of additional costs associated with these outages related to repairs and other items. Oil differentials should be around $3 per barrel discount to MEH and similar to historical levels. In summary, Magnolia is well positioned financially into this year and we expect the positive operational momentum gained from our Giddings results last year to continue to benefit our results into 2021. We're now ready to take your questions.
spk00: an answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touchtone phone. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble your roster. My first question comes from Umang Chowdhury with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
spk03: Good morning and thank you for taking my questions. My first question is on free cash flow allocation framework. You have mentioned that given your strong balance sheet and favorable results in bidding, you plan bulk of the free cash flow towards share repurchase, dividends, and small bolt-ons versus big acquisitions. Can you provide a framework in terms of how we should think about free cash flow allocation going forward? And how are you thinking about potential between, like, the flex between share repurchase and dividends?
spk05: Yeah, so as we, you know, as we look at it, so historically, you know, we had a fair percentage of the cash flow went to acquisitions. We really don't need acquisitions at this point. They're generally dilutive to us because our finding cost is so low that we couldn't duplicate that kind of finding cost in an acquisition. There might be some acreage or something near our stuff, but to buy producing assets is probably dilutive to our numbers. So you should think that there might be some small things there. I don't know how much, but there's nothing right now. We're not going to build any cash. And so there'll be a small, what we would view as sustainable, two semiannual payments of dividends. Our interest expense is only about $25 million, $26 million a year. So, you know, we can, out of whatever you want to say, it's our EBITDA. So I think that, you know, it'll be a small number relative to that. At the end of the year, a year from now, we'll look at how much in addition to the semi-annual dividend we need to pay. I don't have a fixed number. It really depends on how successful we are in reducing our share count. If we can maybe talk down the stock or something and buy stock on weakness or that sort of thing, we'll be looking to do that in size. Otherwise, we'll do it at the 1% quarterly rate. So I think we don't really know how to answer your question of how big the dividend could be. we would prefer to put the money to work in basically increasing the stock price. But we also see a need for dividends going forward. But if the current product prices hold, there'll be a fairly sizable special payment over and above the base dividend a year from now. So we're not going to hoard cash. We've got plenty of Plenty of cash for what we need at this point. So it just depends on how successful we are in the share repurchase. I think the 1% number, 1% a quarter, you should view as a minimum number, not the maximum. I don't know if that's helpful or not.
spk03: That is super helpful. Thank you. My follow-up is on the approved developed reserves. you have highlighted attractive F&D costs of sub $7 per BOE to add approved developed reserves in 2020. Well-costing gatings is expected to be lower in 2021 versus 2020. I wanted to get your early thoughts on 2021 expectations with respect to productivity and cost. You highlighted that there's potential for both of them to improve here. And also, if you can provide the oil mix of the 30 million approved developed reserves you added in 2020, what is the oil mix of those reserves?
spk05: We'll get somebody to, you know, be filed in the K here, in the close of business, but Chris will give you the percentage here in a minute. You know, we think the finding costs for The mix that we ultimately anticipate between Giddings and Carnes will be similar to what it was this year. We give you one year of PUDs, basically this year for PUDs. So you could look at that number and come up with sort of a very conservative number. from looking at what we say we're going to add this year as those PUDs move to PDPs. So I think that we sort of tell you that. We'll give you here this oil number in a minute.
spk01: We can give you the total approved reserves were about 45% oil. I don't have the PDP breakdown on oil. We can reach out to you after the call.
spk03: That will be helpful. Thank you so much.
spk01: Anything else?
spk00: The next question comes from Zach Berham with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
spk08: Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question. I guess first, you got into about 5% to 8% total production growth in 21. Most of your activity is in giddings, but you do have the 10 ducks and carns in the first half, which will be a little oilier. I guess, what would that imply for oil growth on the year or an oil mix for the year?
spk05: To some extent, it depends on how we drill wells. We can manage that to almost anything we want. You know, so, you know, I think for planning purposes, you know, you could use the fourth quarter numbers, you know, percentages as a guide. But understanding that, you know, if gas, you know, for the fourth time in my 40-year career, gas prices were to be decent, we got a lot of gas locations we could drill in parts of Giddings. And we may drill some more of these wells, these so-called gas wells that produce 500 barrels a day of oil, depending on where we are in the second half of the year. We're laying out our program for the back half of the year, and we don't know how much we're going to spend in development and how much in exploration to prove up additional areas. And that's why we're sort of reluctant to talk about the numbers. Obviously, if we spent it all on development, we would be on the high end of the outlook, the guidance we're giving you, maybe through the guidance.
spk08: Thanks. So I guess that's when you talk about drilling 20 to 24 wells in Giddings and in 21. That's a single rig's results. Okay, so that's not necessarily the plan for 21. No. And it sounds like you're not ready to give a split of kind of development between the core area and the delineation area. You're more waiting to see what happens with commodity prices in the back half of the year?
spk05: Yeah, commodity prices and we have to have a plan. I mean, you know, we don't want to waste money. And so, you know, we want to spend on, or whatever you want to call it, or exploration, however you want to describe it, you know, in a way that's thoughtful and doesn't overwhelm the program and confuse people. So, you know, we didn't think, our original thought was to add a mid-rig at the beginning of the year, drill a pad in Carnes, and then go and do, you know, drill in Giddings, The Giddings results have been so strong that, frankly, the Carneswells are not competitive. And so, you know, we're thinking how we're going to manage the back half of the year in a way that is thoughtful.
spk09: Got it. Thanks for the call. That's all for me. Sure.
spk00: The next question comes from Stephen Decker with KeyBank. Please go ahead.
spk09: Hey, guys, I just want to ask about the six new wells in the Quarry of Giddings. Is there anything that's really driving that better performance there that you can point to? Thanks.
spk05: You know, over time, we learn how to drill and complete the wells better. There's nothing physical about it. It's simply, you know, we learn where to, you know, People tend to view all, even in the Permian, they tend to view all this as the same from well to well, and it's really not. And so as you accumulate more data, you become more efficient in deciding where and how you're going to complete the wells. It also makes you pick better locations. But it's fundamentally caused by experience. So it isn't really caused by anything like, you know, phase of the moon or something, you know.
spk04: But clearly less drill time. Less drill time. Less time in the hole.
spk05: Yeah, when you spend less time in the hole, you get better results. I mean, that's just a fact.
spk09: Yeah. Okay, great. That's all for me.
spk02: Thanks.
spk00: The next question comes from Don McIntosh with Johnson Rice. Please go ahead.
spk02: Morning, Steve. Appreciate the color on the dividend and the share repurchase program. I was wondering if you could maybe kind of give us some context for it. How you would prioritize those at higher or lower prices? If oil keeps ticking up to 65 or 70, or maybe we have a pullback here to 50 or 55, when it comes to the dividend and the share repurchase, where do you stack those up?
spk05: We have some fundamental views about the company's earnings potential over time. And so if there's a pullback in oil prices to say, you know, we obviously didn't plan for $60 oil going into the year or whatever it is. And so, you know, we continue to plan basically for significantly lower oil price. If we get more cash, you know, we would prefer to use it to repurchase shares. because that gives us more growth per share. There's no real, we only have $400 million of bonded indebtedness. There's no real debt to pay down. And our interest expenses is $25 million. So I just don't, you know, that's not a very likely use. And so, you know, if we have excess cash, you know, we probably distribute that. It's also, I think, useful to remember that the company is a purchaser of shares, not a seller of shares. And the management are purchasers of shares, not sellers of shares. So, you know, our goals are not necessarily to push the stock price up as much as possible. In fact, our goal, our objective is sort of the opposite. On the other hand, I own 7 million shares. So, you know, my wife thinks dividends are great. Great, thank you.
spk02: And then maybe just one operational question. Sounds like you all are pretty enthused with what you've been able to get done at Giddings. You know, in the past you've talked about preserving Carnes inventory for higher oil prices. Just if you could kind of revisit that, you know, are we there today? It sounds like, you know, you've got some pretty set plans for at least the first half of this year, but, you know, At what point would you start thinking about putting a rig back in Carnes?
spk05: You understand that the Carnes wells don't compete with the Giddings wells. The finding cost is much higher, and the payback is similar. So the rates of return are much higher in the Giddings wells. And so you allocate your, you know, when we talked about this other plan, you know, it was less obvious, at least less obvious to us. And, you know, as long as that remains true, you know, that's what drives our whole plan is the returns, if you will, on the Giddings wells. As long as they stay sort of like this, you know, we're going to be light on Carnes and heavier on Giddings. and we're going to avoid doing acquisition, you know, PDP type acquisitions because it doesn't compete. You know, if you have an industry that's, you know, challenged over time, shall we say, you need to really be cautious about spending money just for growth, just to add, you know, and not generating real returns. You know, if you look at our EBIT calculation, for instance, in taxes, The DD&A rate, you know, is sort of like the finding cost, a little bit more, but sort of like it. So the earnings are actually real earnings for us and indicative of what the program looks like in an earnings basis. And, you know, we're going to try to make that better over time. But, you know, we don't want to degrade that either by, you know, just throwing a bunch of money at stuff. The Carnes Wells, just like the Giddings Wells, will be there for a long time. The locations are not going away.
spk02: Okay, thank you.
spk00: The next question comes from Noel Parks with Towie Brothers. Please go ahead.
spk07: Good morning. Good morning. You know, actually, talking about where we are with crude prices having improved as much as they have, I think we're at nearly $15 more now than where we ended the year. I was curious about the non-core inventory at Giddings. And in this price range, does any of that become a possibility? Sorry?
spk01: What inventory? You cut out.
spk07: Oh, so sorry. The inventory outside the 70,000 core acres, with significantly higher oil prices, does any of that come close to being in play now?
spk05: Well, we drilled two wells way outside it, and those two so-called gas wells. So those are clearly economic in this environment. And there's probably more that is also.
spk04: They had a lot of oil, as we said.
spk05: They made almost 600 barrels a day of oil. So the short answer is, yeah, there is. But on the other hand, we're maximizing our returns per dollar. And we're not going to run out of these high return locations anytime soon.
spk07: Great. And Sally, if you touched on this already, but are you, for your long-term planning for crude, are you sticking with sort of mid-40s as your baseline number?
spk05: Yeah, 45 to 50, and, you know, $2.50 or so for gas. $2.50 for gas.
spk07: Okay, great.
spk05: I think that's all for me. I wouldn't take those numbers to the bank. Those are just planning numbers. I have not a great record, except in gas, of predicting prices.
spk07: Fair enough. Thanks a lot. Thank you.
spk00: The next question comes from Nicholas Pope with Seaport Jobo. Please go ahead.
spk10: Morning. Morning. I had a question on your lease operating expenses. It was a lot lower than I was expecting, so it looked great for the quarter. I've seen a lot of other operators as kind of activity started to restart in the second half of the year. That number climbed up with workovers and everything else, just activity ramping up. But you all dropped a lot from third quarter. And so I was hoping you could talk a little bit about where operating expenses are. And as activity is ramped up, where we, I know you haven't, you know, guide to that necessarily, but like where do we, where should we expect third quarter and fourth quarter that drop? What should we expect on board?
spk05: Yeah, so in the work over activity, you know, is sort of real. It comes and goes and makes the numbers lumpy. But the other point is, you know, the production is up considerably. So, you know, the cost per BOE is small. come down. We also made some, you know, when we went through the valley of death, you know, in the second quarter last year, you know, we looked at every nickel we were spending on production, and we found some things that we should have done that we didn't do that we've now done, you know, right-sizing compressors and that sort of thing that, you know, fundamentally lowered the number So, you know, we work on what we can fix. You know, we work on operating costs. We work on G&A per barrel. Those are things that are sort of in our control. And we keep our capital under control so our finding cost stays under control. So, you know, we're very focused on this EBIT calculation. So, you know, it could be, there'll be probably a little more this first quarter from the, you know, fixing the the wells, but not a lot more, but a little more from that. And production, it will be the same, similar to the fourth quarter. Otherwise, it would have been up if it wasn't for the loss for the week. Got it. That makes sense.
spk10: And I wanted to clarify, there was a comment about that ironwood sale that, did you all see it? You don't expect transportation costs?
spk05: No. It was really a passive investment that came with the original deal. We didn't do anything to encourage. Somebody bought out the people who were running it before, and they offered us the same deal. We weren't generating any cash from it, never generated any cash. it generated a small amount of earnings, but not much. And, uh, you know, we, we thought that, you know, we, we could use 25 million or 27 million more than they could. So, uh, you know, we, we took it, but we did, we didn't do any new contracts or anything like that because, you know, it was always partially owned. So we owned about a third of it and, and somebody else had it. So we always had a contract and it's a, it's a market contract. So, uh, And we're the major customer on the line, so you would guess that we would know what our activity would be and maybe better than somebody who just bought it.
spk10: All right. Well, that's all I needed. I appreciate the time. Thank you. Thank you.
spk00: As a reminder, if you have a question, please press star, then one to be joined into the queue. The next question comes from Neil Dingman with Truist Securities. Please go ahead.
spk06: Well, now, Steve, my question, you have so much acreage and obviously good acreage in Giddings. Would you all consider drilling partnerships or anything of the like in order to maybe advance that acreage more?
spk05: Generally, I don't like to give away money. So, you know, and, you know, You know, the problem with dealing with the people who do that, you know, this is like the old, you know, I used to have a guy I worked for, and every time I got into some trouble, he would say, well, if you're going to play in the mud, you expect to get your boots dirty. So if you're fooling around with these guys, you're going to get your boots dirty. The goal is not to make the business more complicated. You know, we run a fairly straightforward, simple business. If he brought somebody in, he'd want some of the, you know, $5 finding costs. So why would I do that? Even though it's stretched out over a long period of time, you know, the value is still there. And, you know, I just don't believe, you know, I always, when we started this three years ago, I used the only way anybody's ever made money in the oil business. You could guess oil prices correctly, but I don't know anybody who ever was able to do that successfully over time, so put that aside. The second thing would be that you've got optionality for very low price. And my prior employer, that was a thought process there. And here, same thing. I knew that there was a lot of oil in place in Giddings. I didn't really know how to get it out or whether we'd be successful or not. But I knew I wasn't paying much for the option. And to sell the optionality to some guy who's going to dirty my boots strikes me as not a lot of fun.
spk06: Like the answer and just what you and Chris are thinking these days on lettering hedges or just in hedges in general.
spk05: I looked at other people's results and I noticed huge losses on mark to market on hedges, which goes to the principle that, you know, estimating, predicting oil prices is difficult, especially about the future. And gas, I've always had a sort of negative view, and so we hedged a little bit of gas. We don't really need to buy the insurance. Oil fluctuates over time, and if you don't get when it runs up and you don't get to reap that, you're going to wind up with below average prices. I mean, I don't believe that Some guy at Goldman Sachs is in some sort of philanthropic activity where he's selling you this protection for free. He expects to make money. Sometimes you might beat him. But on average, if you do it all the time, you're going to get a below average price for it because he's selling protection insurance. And we don't need to buy the insurance. That's why we carry low debt and the cash. We went through the second quarter. It wasn't fun. But we went through the second quarter, you know, without really using, you know, except for some working capital changes, you know, not really losing anything. We could have survived that. All unhedged, yeah. Yeah, and we were unhedged. So, you know, I'm not, you know, there's some things that we know how to do. Forecasting oil prices is not one of them.
spk06: No, I'm glad to hear it. It seems like the banks only want to make money on those. Thanks, Steve.
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