Matador Resources Company

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the fourth quarter and full year 2023 MetaDOR Resources Company Earnings Conference Call. My name is Tanya, and I'll be serving as the operator for today. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. We will facilitate a question and answer session at the end of the company's remarks. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. for replay purposes, and the replay will be available on the company's website for as one year as discussed in the company's earnings press release issued yesterday. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Matt Schmidt, Vice President, Investor Relations for Matador. Mr. Schmidt, you may begin.

Thank you, Tanya, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for Matador's fourth quarter and full year 2023 earnings conference call. Some of the presenters today will reference certain non-GAAP financial measures regularly used by Matador Resources in measuring the company's financial performance. Reconciliations of such non-GAAP financial measures with the comparable financial measures calculated in accordance with GAAP are contained at the end of the company's earnings press release. As a reminder, certain statements included in this morning's presentation may be forward-looking and reflect the company's current expectations or forecasts of future events based on the information that is now available. Actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Additional information concerning factors that could cause actual results to differ materially is contained in the company's earnings release and its most recent annual report on Form 10-K and any subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. In addition to our earnings press release issued yesterday, I would like to remind everybody that you can find a slide presentation in connection with the fourth quarter and full year 2023 earnings release under the Investor Relations tab on our corporate website. And with that, I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Joe Foran, our founder, chairman, and CEO. Joe?

Thank you, Mac, and thank you all for taking the time to listen in. This has been – last year was a very important year for us, and this – year has taken on growing importance, too. The first thing that I'd like to mention is simply that it's been a remarkable year in that production is up, revenues are up, acreage is up 18%, inventory, of course, is up, and our dividends are up. While costs are down, including LOE is down, drilling costs are down, G&A is down, and the debt is down. So that's the big picture. Now, but we're trying to improve around all the edges on that. But that's the basic story. Things are headed in the right avenue. The second thing, I'd just like to... point out that we've absorbed the advanced acreage and acquisition that's the largest to date and it's integrated very well. We owe a shout out to the professionalism. The AmeriDev people were very professional in the handoff. It went very smoothly and we're delighted by how efficient and how the production and the ROC have exceeded expectations. So, uh, thanks to them, uh, we're trying to put those assets to full work and you'll be getting a report on that. And those were two of the main points that I wanted to get across, uh, to start the conversation. And now we're ready for your questions.

Certainly. Ladies and gentlemen, due to time constraints, we ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Again, we ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up until all have had a chance to ask a question, after which we will welcome additional questions from you. First question is from Scott Handel of RBC Capital Markets. And Scott, your line is open. Hey, guys.

Yep. Hey, can you hear me, guys?

Sure.

Yes. Hi, Scott. Good morning. Good morning. You know, hey, up in the northern part of the Delaware, I mean, midstream constraints has been an industry issue. You guys alluded to some third-party tightness. Could you give a little more color on, you know, what that is and how much it impacts you and your solutions going forward?

Well, Scott, that's a real good question, and I'll start it off, and others around the table can fill in but constraints is probably not the best word for it it's more about maintenance that the older systems you know they're going to have a leak here there there's going to be some part of the equipment that needs to be attended to and they have every reason to get it repaired as quickly as as they can because they're not receiving revenues while it's down for maintenance. And of course, we're eager for them to get it repaired as quickly, but that's just part of the business and operations that they're going to have a few more. But we appreciate the way they've gotten after it. We've appreciated their communications. We've been fortunate on our part of our midstream system. We have not been down, but of course our equipment is out of the later vintage. So everybody's working on the problem, and it isn't a matter of well productivity, it's just these things go down, they need to be attended to, but we have fairly limited exposure there. But it has had the effect of about 5,500 barrels a day for this month. When you put that in perspective of a whole year, this is one quarter that we're experiencing it. And if you put in the whole year, you're talking about maybe 1% of our expected annual production. And we think we'll make that up in the quarters to come fairly easily. We haven't taken into account any acquisitions in our projected production, or very little. So you have that upside, and you have the other efficiencies that our production group seems to come up with each year.

And hey, Scott, this is Glenn. I'd just pile on to what Joe was saying in just the temporary nature of this reduction in production for Q1. We do feel very confident that the issues will be resolved by the end of this quarter and we'll be setting ourselves up very nicely for the rest of the year. I do want to highlight that the connectors between the Pronto system and the advanced properties is very well underway. We have the permits in the right-of-way and the construction is very well underway there, and same on the Pronto to the San Mateo connector. And we did highlight in the release, but just to say that the uptime that we've experienced with San Mateo and Pronto is we feel second to none in that communication that goes on between the teams is daily, and we have a lot of visibility into that. the operations both on the maintenance side and what our development plans are. And those two, you know, really three businesses do go very well hand-in-hand with each other.

Got it. Appreciate the color. And as my follow-up question, you know, you've had the advanced wells online for, you know, probably getting close to, you know, six months now. Can you give us a sense of, you know, how those wells are performing relative to your expectation. And with the next batch of advanced wells, which I think are the Dagger wells, remind us, like, any differences we should expect there. And if you had any color on, you know, the timing within the second quarter, you do expect to bring those on?

Sure, Scott. This is Tom Olson. The first part of your question regarding the 21 Margarita wells that we brought online, back in August of 2023. We've been very pleased with those results. Just as we've always said, those wells would come online with very high oil cuts, and I think we've certainly gotten that at average oil cuts of over 84%. They've gone very smoothly into integrating with the production facility teams, and those wells are off to a great start. The next wells we've got, the Dagger Lake South wells, As we said in the slide deck on page 11, those wells are very close to the margarita wells with very similar rock quality, going to have very high oil cuts just like the margaritas. And those wells will come online in the second quarter of 2024. Similar to how we brought the margaritas online in a staggered fashion, it still is a very big project for us. Those wells are mile and a half laterals as opposed to the 2.25 mile long margaritas. It's still at a a very high working interest. I believe it's 21 gross and about 19 net wells. And we're feeling very strong about those results. And I can't wait to get them online soon.

Appreciate that. Thank you.

And one moment for our next question. And our next question will be coming from Neil Dingman of Truist. Neil, your line is open.

Sorry, guys, I think I was on mute. Joe, next quarter, my question is around your regional focus, and I'm just wondering, you know, could you specifically talk about, it seemed like that northernly area, you had very strong activity. I'm just wondering in that, is that going to be the focus of this area, and could you talk about how this gray area sort of compares to that, you know, very, very strong Rodney Robinson state line area?

Neil, if you could repeat your question. You cut out in the middle of it. If you'd restate the question, I'd feel better than trying to guess.

Okay. What I'm getting at is specifically you suggest that 24-year-old production is growing faster boosted, I think, by that Northern Lee County activity. And I'm just wondering, can I assume that post the natural gas connection, that much of the Visscher's activity will be in this, in that Northern Lee area? I'm just wondering then, how do you all think this Northern Lee area compares to, you know, that very strong state line of Rodney Robinson?

Hey, Neil, this is Tom Olson. I'll take the first part of that. And then, you know, Ned or Glenn may want to chime in as well. But As we've talked for quite some time, the bulk of this advanced acreage that's in the League County area is sandwiched between the Rodney Robinson acreage to the south and some of the Mallon acreage to the north and east. We've been very pleased with the results, not just from those two tracts, but also from the other properties that have been drilling in that same area. The oil cuts on all of those are very high. They're not exactly the same amongst all areas, but very strong oil cuts, and we expect to continue to focus there. I will highlight that this is one of the areas where we've been very happy with the third bone-spring carbonate interval, where we highlighted that one of our third bone-spring carbonate wells had IP'd at approximately 2,600 DOE per day, and I believe at about 86% oil. That's a zone that we added to our inventory. over the last year. And also, we've also added the second most spring carbonate to our inventory this year based on the strength of several wells drilled in and around that area. We have about 19 wells that we have an interest in that help kind of donate that zone for us. But, you know, we've always been proud of that range area and also, you know, kind of the Antelope Ridge area. But I would highlight that all of our assets are contributing all around the basin. And even, you know, we brought online 17 wells in the Arrowhead acid area in the last quarter that we're very proud of. And we're also connected to the San Mateo system and also located, generally speaking, where that Pronto to San Mateo connector line is. Hopefully that helps.

You know, I think, Neal, a good point at this time since come up is we got some questions last night from people asking about the connector lines, would they be on or not, and I want to just say again for the record that we have a very high confidence level that they'll be on in the next quarter. Glenn, do you want to elaborate?

Yeah, just as I said and Joe said, we're very confident that those will be complete by the end of the first quarter, and we'll be ready to go there. And another advantage to that system is just by tying those two together is really taking advantage of all 520 million cubic feet a day of processing and gathering. So we're excited. It's getting put in the ground right now and excited to put them in service.

Well, all the permits are taken. All the surface use agreements are done. All the paperwork's done. They're out there working on it, two crews. So we're in control of our fate. You know, it's just continuing. They've already done a substantial amount of the work. So, again, we have a high degree it'll be finished. In the same way with the other connector, that's coming together nicely. And, again, we'll have, if we need to, to bring it to expedite matters, we'll have a couple extra crews. So they won't be waiting on us.

No, that's exactly right. Great. At this point, it's on us, and we're very good at building pipelines.

That's fantastic details. And, guys, my second question is on land acquisitions. Specifically, you all continue to be highly successful just bolting on assets. I think you mentioned besides the assets that added about 1,000 BUE per day that came in the latest additions. I'm just wondering, will this continue to be a priority going forward as you see these opportunities?

Yeah. Neil, thank you for asking that question. The answer is yes. Last year, of course, Advance was our biggest bill ever, and it's drawn a lot of attention. But our land group, our business development group, did another 200 transactions. Most of them were very, very small. Some of them were a little larger. But they're out there, our land men, in particular out there all the time making deals. What the deals last couple of years have grown increasingly is just a rationalization of assets between companies. You trade out of your non-op for somebody else's non-op that you operate. And so things like that are little orphans out by themselves. So I think those will come along. Companies are being very cooperative with each other. These are small transactions. They don't have that kind of, by themselves, a big material impact. But in the aggregate, they add up and they make your operations that much more efficient. So there's a real rationale to do that. And then at the same time, some of the... The bigger outfits are wanting to concentrate their assets in one area or another, so those opportunities come up. And then you have private equity is always got a few things coming out. So I think it'll continue. And Van's group may want to say a word, but he has them out there on the road a lot. And they've They're building relationships and just trying to do things that make sense for both sides.

Yeah, hey, this is Van. I'll echo what Joe just said and add a little bit that we try to make these win-win deals for both sides. I think we've got a long track record of our brick-by-brick approach. I think you can expect to see that to continue. We're off to a great start so far this year and have a pretty favorable outlook for the rest of the year. but also want to give a shout out to our counterparts that we do these deals to. You know, it takes both sides to make it a win-win. And as Joe mentioned earlier, the professionalism that we saw on the other side for the advanced deal, I think we see that on these smaller deals too. And relationships, as you know, are important to us. And we want to be able to say that we did what we said we're going to do. And I think you could just, as I said, expect to see more of the same going forward. That's our bread and butter. And we're constantly evaluating different deals and trying to keep our pipeline full.

Well, that's been the other key, Neil, is that Van and his group hadn't done one deal and then just stopped and let the pipeline run dry. They've just managed to keep, you know, deals floating down the pipeline. Some of them fall out for one reason or another, but by keeping deals in the pipeline all the time, there's that brick-by-brick approach that happens each month. And... It's been effective, and we like our chances. We like our ability of our land men to build those relationships and make those deals. Thank you, Joe.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question will be coming from Tim Resvin of KeyBank Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Good morning, folks, and thank you for taking my question. I want to circle back on the 21 Dagger Lake wells. You provided some comments on them earlier. They clearly look like they're going to underpin what's going to be a pretty big, steep production ramp in the back half of the year, so they're obviously pivotal to the guide you have out there. Can you give some specificity on exactly what's happening there? Have you started completions, or what is sort of the schedule over the next couple months to get those online with expectations.

Hey, Tim. This is Chris Calvert, EVP co-COO. It's a great question. If you look at slide 11 in our deck, we have a pretty good summary slide on the advanced integration. But as far as timing on these 21 Dagger Lake South wells, everything is going as planned. It's a very similar story to the Pronto connector down to some of this acreage. It's kind of business as usual on the operations front. You know, we messaged that we are pilot testing our Trimofrac. That's actually going on on this Dagger Lake South project. And so we're very excited about Trimofrac in and of itself. But just more specific to your question, operations are moving forward as planned. And, you know, we're pushing forward for that kind of Q2 turn in line date. But everything operationally seems to be going according to plan.

And, Kim, this is Glenn Stetson. I just wanted to highlight that when we bought the advanced properties, they had built out a water gathering system, and they had a disposal well there, too. And so we'll be tying into that on the water side. And then on the gas side, as I mentioned, that gas is planned to go to Pronto with the connector. So we're all set up there from a takeaway standpoint.

Okay, and then I know you staggered those tills. Do you have any timing you can provide on when that'll happen? Like in April or June? Just trying to understand.

Yeah, Tim, this is Tom again. Very similar to how we did things on the Margarita side. We'll probably have a little bit of a compressed ramp up compared to Margarita since many of these facilities are We're a little bit further along in the integration process, but probably mid to late Q2 is probably my guess. These forecasts, they do tend to change, but I agree with Chris. Things are going very well, and we have great confidence in the second quarter.

Okay. Thank you for those details. With my follow-up, I'm sorry.

And I'm sorry, our next question will be coming from Leo Mariani.

Hi, guys. I wanted to kind of get a little bit more color on the midstream. I think you guys obviously seem very confident the issues will sort of be behind you at the end of the first quarter here. So once everything's kind of connected in terms of advanced to pronto and pronto to San Mateo, Do you guys generally feel like this gives you a lot more redundancies in the system, so you're not as dependent upon third parties? And then could you also just address kind of where you stand on potential partner conversations for the new $200 million plan?

Leo, I'll start. This is Glenn. The short answer is yes. So the Pronto to San Mateo Connector program will be set up such that those two systems can flow one way or the other. And so today it looks like it's more pronto to San Mateo, but once the second plant, the 200 million a day plant expansion that is underway today on the pronto system, that will expand the capacity of the system as a whole And gas can swing back and forth between those two systems and provide more flexibility and more flow assurance for times where there's either preventative maintenance going on or whatever the situation might be. And that second plant is scheduled for the first half of 2025. and our BD teams are, you know, we're going to fill a lot of that plant expansion up with Matador's equity volumes, but certainly there'll be extra capacity there, and our teams are actively working on what opportunities there are for third-party volumes that'll deliver to that system, and we feel like there is a lot of opportunity given the nature of what exists today in that northern part of the basin.

Okay, that's helpful. Any color on where you stand with partner discussions, potential partners for that new 20 million day plant?

Yeah, Leo, I'll take that question. Look, we are in a position, we have plenty of money on our RBL to fund it. We've paid down our RBL over $200 million for what we borrowed on the advantage acquisition. So that's the use of that is that it's there. We have over a billion dollars on our RBL. We have good standing. So it's not a problem. Our criteria is not because we need some partner. we're interested in somebody who helps bring something extra to the table that, you know, in some way that enhances the value or the efficiency of the system and the plant. Or gives drilling incentives like what we have with San Mateo. So it's out there. If we can find a partner who can enhance it. We're interested in talking, but we're not just trying to get financing. And that doesn't have a lot of appeal because we already have that in place with our RBL. Appreciate the caller.

And one moment for our next question. And our next question will be coming from Zach Sarum of JPM. Your line is open.

Thanks for taking my question. I guess first just on your cash taxes, the guidance that 5% to 10% of pre-tax income was a bit better than we were modeling as we had assumed you'd be subject to the AMT. Can you give us some color on how you're able to still defer a majority of your taxes in 2024 and any thoughts on how cash taxes will trend in 2025 and in future years?

Sure. This is Rob Macklick. I'm the chief accounting officer. You know, we continue to work really hard, both internally and with our external tax providers. And we try and take every deduction and tax credit that we're allowed to take under law. You know, in 2023, as you noted, you know, we were down about 1% on our current tax rate. We knew that that was going to go up for 2024. I think it is a little bit better than, you know, even what we were anticipating. just as we continue to work through the kind of vague guidance that's out there. But we feel very confident in our current estimation that we won't be subject to the CAMP, that alternative minimum tax that you referenced for 2024. We continue to evaluate that and look through just, there are so many factors that can go into whether we'll be subject to that in 2025 and we'll continue to monitor that. At the moment, like you said, we feel very good about the 5% to 10% of our pre-tax income would be cash taxes. But like I said, we'll continue to work and drive that down as much as we can.

Thanks for that, Collar. One just quick follow-up. On the cash flow statement, there's a $68 million payment to advance this quarter. Can you detail what exactly that was and if there are any future expected payments in regards to that deal?

Sure, Zach. This is Van. That was actually a tack-on deal for some additional interest in the basin that was very complementary to what we had closed on last year. And so, Brian, I don't know if you want to expand on that, but it was just a more additional acreage from the same deal, which I think goes towards what we said earlier that these relationships are important. You know, they had this interest that they wanted to move out and called us and we were able to make a deal.

Yeah, this is Brian. I think that's exactly right. And so on the cash flow statement, it's set forth as advanced because it's really, for accounting rules, they treat it as almost a continuation of the business combination we did before. But it's a great deal. Continue to add interest in some of the similar acres that we bought, and we're really excited about it. We already talked about the wells coming online this year that we expect to come on, the 21 additional wells and the 21 margarita wells that came on last year. So great acreage, and we really enjoy working with the AmeriDev folks and being able to continue to complete these transactions.

Thanks. Maybe if I could squeeze one more in. Can you detail any production that came with those acquisitions?

Yeah, this is Brian. So I think really that the 1,000 BOE per day that we mentioned in the release, that really is due to that advanced acquisition, the additional advanced acreage and interest that we got. And so, you know, I think that's a good deal for us. And I think if we look at... Going forward, it's 80% oil, 77% oil is what we got. It's really good acreage and good interest. That's really for that specific deal. I think I mentioned earlier, we do blocking and tackling deals all the time. Our land group does a very good job at that. They continue to add interest and add production that way. As we grow throughout this year, part of that growth, of course, is always that we we'll do deals. We think that the land groups have done a great job the last few years doing 200 deals a year, and I expect they'll continue to do that this year.

We appreciated also that NCAP and AmeriDev worked with us on that transaction. They were primarily some minerals and some overrides, and it was a good fit for us. And so we appreciated the follow-up and that we got that. It isn't huge, but If we do enough like this, they'll have a favorable impact. Great. Thanks, Joe. Thanks, Brian.

And one moment for our next question. Our next question will be coming from Oliver Huang of TPH and Company. Your line is open, Oliver.

Good morning, all, and thanks for taking my questions. Just on the operational side, I think you all highlighted about 60% of completions this year are going to be using SAML or tri-multifract ops. Just how much of the expected cost benefit and also the efficiency benefit from a cycle time perspective has kind of been underwritten into your 2024 outlook as it sits today?

Yeah, Oliver, this is Chris Calvert. That's a great question. You're referring to slide 15 in the deck where we're talking about our completed lateral footage efficiencies, and really that has kind of been the main focus of our operational teams is how do we put forward those capital efficiencies that really help insulate from any sort of OFS inflation or deflation. And so when we look at the cost savings associated with SimulFrac and or TrimulFrac, a lot of those savings are baked into our capital budgets. You know, we pilot tested SimulFrac in 2021. So I think now that it has become such a large percentage of our portfolio, we do calculate that and factor that into our budget, forward-looking budget. Trimofrac, from an efficiency standpoint, we still, like I said, we're in process of doing that right now. And so as far as the efficiencies of what we will gain, I think we'll be talking about that more on the call in April. But we're excited about Trimofrac. We saw about a 20% to 30% increase improvement in capital efficiencies from the completion standpoint when we move to Simulfrac. So we're expecting some similar numbers, a significant improvement from an operational efficiency standpoint by incorporating Simulfrac into the operational portfolio.

Chris, while you're on that area, I was going to ask Tom to talk about the U-turn wealth and the capital savings there. The same thing, and you look at slide M on page 16.

Sure. Yeah, thanks, Joe. Oliver, this is Tom Elsener. Yeah, looking at slide M on the U-turn wells, you know, as we kind of talked about before, we drilled our first two U-turn or horseshoe wells, as we've called them before, down at our Wolf property in Texas. And we've had very successful production results from those wells that, you know, even though they're U-turn wells, they perform just like a straight two-mile-long lateral, very high pressures and IP rates of between 2,100 and 2,400 BOE per day. You wouldn't know the difference if it was a U-turn or two-mile lateral from the production results. We monitor those wells for several months now, and combined with the great cost savings that the team executed down there, we're ready to kind of do a few more of those. And I think we've highlighted that there may be up to 20 or so U-turn wells that we may mix into the drill schedule, kind of you know, over the next kind of two years. We have some really nice rock that we would like to put into the program, just want to drill in some U-turns. And so I think we're very excited for those. And, you know, I think they'll be very successful. We still are kind of in the learning phase. We're going to learn about some different, you know, targets in different areas. So we still, you know, I still think we're kind of in the walking mode. We're not quite in the running mode yet. but I think we're very optimistic about it.

Billy, you know, it's your group and you've had a lot of innovations from managed pressure drilling to the rig design. Do you want to say anything else you're working on?

Yes, sir. I mean, that was a good project and, you know, we had Patterson rigs out there on it and had some good engineers and did a really good job there getting those wells drilled and completed and, you know, It was a great operation. Just while we're at it, go ahead and give a little shout out to Patterson and everything they've done through the last couple decades. They didn't just build a rig and leave it there. They've continued to add with their technology and their operating systems and techniques. This is another one they were out there with us, had extra people out there to make sure it was a good, successful operation. Also, they're crack crack side next year and all we've worked with them they do a great job for us i'd like to mention halliburton slumber day and others that work with us and help us stay on top of our game but uh really have uh done a lot of good with patterson on the u-turn wells especially was a was a highlight but also now we've picked up uh you know the larger rig 2000 horsepower rig and uh We're looking to do great things with that as well. We're just getting started with it and got the rig out there put together, got our surface hole, intermediate, and fixing to get to the game time, show time with getting after the production hole. We're expecting to set some new records there. While we're talking about records, that MaxCom group where our geologists and engineers work together, they've been doing a great job there and coming up on our board week a week or so ago we had 262 records there since we started MaxCom and we already upped that three more to 265 so they just continuously get better and better and that's worked out to be just a great operation for us there. all of our hands coming in. We try to work all of our new people, engineers and geologists, spend a little time in there and get to know each other and it makes us a lot better on both sides of the operations. We talk about the records and the money we're saving, drilling faster and staying in zone. Staying in zone is a big part. We don't talk about a lot. We talk about all the money, $40 million we saved with all the records and the time, but also when you drill a 10,000 foot lateral and you stay in zone 99 to 100% of the time and you get an extra 10 barrels of oil per foot, you get an extra 10,000 barrels of oil. That's a lot of money right there. All around just a great efficient program and Drilling and completion both have been doing a great job. Chris, you want to add something?

Yeah, hey, Oliver, I'll just kind of close the loop. I think, you know, what it really comes down to operationally for us is, you know, we look for technological improvements that we can continue to push every single year, and those come through relationships such as Patterson, Nextier, and other vendors to help us drill and complete wells faster. But then also just, you know, engineering and people efficiencies that we find here in the office, and that's, you know, you look at something like Trimal Frack or Shimal Frack, And that's really just kind of reimagining a process. It's been around for a long time, and that comes from the people side. There's not a lot of new technology that goes into a simulfrac or a trimulfrac. It's just reimagining a process of how to make it better and more of a win-win situation for us and our partners, which in this case would be Patterson, Exeter, Halliburton. So I think it's a really good combination approach of how we look to maintain and maximize our capital efficiencies from the operations standpoint.

Speaking of the efficiencies, while we're giving shout-outs, we need to do some for Forrester Smith, who is out there all the time. Pipe is there. We don't have to wait on it. I appreciate him.

Yeah, correct, Joe. There's a lot of people. The list is numerous, but I think when we talk about anything that we're looking at as far as just timing and tills and things like that, You know, if you don't have pipe ready on location when you're ready to case a well, you're going to be held up. And our service provider has been really our casing provider, you know, for decades. And so I think you have relationships that go back that help weather the bad times and flourish in the good times. And so I think, you know, whether it's Halliburton's, Patterson, Nexteer's, you know, the casing companies, it is something that we value at a tremendous level. And we continue to kind of push forward to make it win-win situations for both the vendor partnerships, and Matador itself.

Thanks. That's great detail. And for my follow-up, I know that you all have had extensive results and data kind of across the stack, but the increase of capital for wells targeting the first bone spring caught our eye for the 2024 program. So, any color with respect to just kind of the thought process behind that decision? and maybe if there's any sort of commentary on expectations for those wells and also assumptions embedded for year-over-year well productivity trends for the program as a whole.

Sure. Oliver, this is Tom Mulsner. We really like the first bone springs, and the reason we're investing money in that specific interval is simply because the well results have been very solid, even going back to You know, many years ago with our kind of first test at the first one spring at Marlin Downey in Eastern Antelope Ridge, we continued to delineate that zone kind of all kind of throughout the northern Delaware Basin and feel very confident in those targets. Kind of going to your kind of well productivity question, yeah, we put out, you know, slide number six or slide C, you know, showing our average UR over the last four years being you know, being a very, very successful program, and we can expect that to, you know, continue. There's a variety of different performances in all different asset areas, but we continue to focus on investing the company's resources into the northern, kind of the oilier portions, and you see that in the oil URs that we've generated in the first loan spring, which is certainly part of that.

Awesome. Thanks for the time, guys.

And one moment for our next question. Our next question will be coming from John Freeman. Raymond James, your line is open.

Hi, guys. Hi, John. On the Marlin processing plant, you all laid out the return and the payback period that's expected. Can you all speak to how you all envision the volume split on that plant between Matador and third parties once it's up and running next year?

Yeah, John, this is Brian. I'm happy to take a shot at that, and then Glenn can clean up anything after. But really I think right now at San Mateo we're 70%, 80% Matador. I think as you move over to Pronto it's almost the opposite right now. But I think going forward, you'll end up more with the new plant, almost 50-50 split with the new plant. So all in, you know, we'll probably end up being 60% Matador, 65% Matador, and the other third party. And we look forward to those third party opportunities. We think there are a lot of them up in that area. And so a lot of good partnerships and a lot of repeat customers. And so as we build the plant, we think there's a lot of real opportunity there.

That's great. And then my, my follow up, and it's kind of dovetails what you just mentioned, Brian, which is, um, you know, y'all talked about kind of a need in this area for more processing for, uh, it seems like for probably about a year. And so I guess once we think about, you know, the Marlin plant coming, the expansion at least, uh, being completed next year, is there another area, you know, across y'all's acreage footprint that you've already sort of identified as like another area that at some point y'all would like to expand? processing capability?

You know, John, that's still in the thinking stage and give us a little time to firm up our ideas and plans and we'll be happy to share them with you. But it's a little too tentative to go out there and then be, you know, why didn't we do exactly what that is? We've We're in the planning stage, and there's a lot of factors, and when we come out, we'll have all that detail for you, but it certainly is a matter that's on our mind, and we think a good opportunity to go along with our other opportunities, but we've got to prioritize because we have some great drilling opportunities and great third party, and reconciling those is part of the process. The guys around this table are we're all thinking about with each other.

Thanks, Joe. I appreciate the time, guys.

Appreciate the question, too.

In one moment for our next question. Our next question will be coming from Phillips Johnston of Capital One Securities. Phillips, your line is open.

Hey, guys. Thanks. Most of my questions have been answered, but maybe just a clarification on the additional advance property acquisition in Q4. You mentioned about 1,000 a day impact in Q4. Just in terms of timing of when that closed, was that a full quarter's impact or a partial quarter's impact, meaning that the current run rate impact is somewhere north of that number?

Yeah, this is Brian. I'm happy to answer that. It really, when we're referring to the 1,000, we're really referring to the full quarter impact. But on a go-forward basis, I think that deal will continue to have really good returns for us going forward into 2024. I mean, I think, again, as I said, the land guys have done just a fantastic job. I think if you look at page 12 of our deck, you'll see in 2012 we had 7,500 net acres, and now we're over 152,000 net acres. And so they continue to build that brick-by-brick acquisition and add to our production, add to our reserves, and do a fantastic job.

Okay, great. And just to clarify what's embedded in your production guidance, does the fourth quarter 24 exit rate guidance assume any incremental volumes from these types of future small-scale acquisitions like the ones you've been doing, or is it sort of organic from where we're seeing today?

Yeah, so I think going forward this year, really it's more acquisitions that we know that are close to being closed or being closed. We take those into account. But other than that, it's In large major, it's organic growth, and so I think that we do these brick-by-brick acquisitions. There's always some of that, and we know there will be some of that, so we take some of that into account. But really, it's more on just the straight organic growth for the year as we look at the exit rate to 2024.

Okay, perfect. Thanks so much.

Okay. And the final question will be from Kevin McCarty of Pickering Energy Partners. Kevin, your line is open.

for taking my question. I appreciate all the details on the first quarter turn lines and capex. Your guided exit rate for 4Q oil was better than we expected. Can you kind of help us bridge that gap on how you hit that exit rate? Any more color you can provide on the capex or the turn in line cadence throughout the year? I mean, you mentioned the 21 wells that come on in the second quarter. Is there another slug of wells or is that really what's going to drive the production higher?

Yeah, this is Brian. Kevin, thanks for the question. I think, you know, going through the year, we talked about those 21 wells will come on in the second quarter, and those really do help drive production higher. In addition, you know, this year on total, we expect to turn to sell 94 net wells. And so, you know, those are spread out as well, kind of throughout the second, third quarter as we go forward into the fourth quarter. And And so, you know, it's really a mix there. It's kind of split between the two quarters from third quarter and second quarter with more weighted towards the second quarter just because those 21 wells would come online. And so that sets us up for that great fourth quarter that we've talked about. I think we're really excited about that exit rate and how it sets us up for next year.

Great. And as my follow-up, you mentioned that you made some payments on the Marlin plant expansion in 4Q. How much of the 2024 midstream budget is allocated to the processing plant expansion? I think in the past you've said that that plant could cost $200 million overall.

Yeah, hi, this is Kevin. This is Glenn. So for 2024, approximately $90 to $100 million is associated with the actual Marlin II plant. And then, you know, there's obviously CapEx, that we've attributed to the build-out between the connectors that we're talking about there, the addition of compressor stations, and then building out to some of our properties on the northern part of Ranger.

Great. Thank you, guys.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This ends the Q&A portion of this morning's conference call. I'd now like to turn the call back to management for any closing remarks.

Yes, I do have a few closing remarks. The first is just to refer you to slide D, which summarizes our company highlights for last year. At this time last year, I was saying that we were beginning the year at about 100,000 barrels VOE per day, and that I thought with the advance and our other drilling programs, we would boost that during the year and come up by 50%. And sure enough, we did. Our exit rate was 145,000 barrels, so great work by the team. A second in slide D just shows that and also emphasized that our alignment of interest that the management group itself has about 6% of Matador and we have over 90% participation in our employee stock purchase program. So everybody in this room and throughout the company is just like you, that we've got chips on the table. I'd also like to give a shout out to our measurement room. It runs 24-7 like our MaxCom. and keeps an eye to be sure we're getting paid for each barrel of oil in MCF. And now over the years of the time period, they've added tens of millions of dollars. I think 32 million was the number we discussed at our board meeting. So it's great work by them in tracking that and checking each barrel of oil at each invoice. Some of that's tedious work, but they've stuck to it, and it's it's paid off. I'd also just, you know, y'all have asked a lot of really good questions, but I just want to be sure some things to emphasize the reserve growth from $360 million to $460 million. And if price of oil hadn't slipped, there'd be more oil than that. Some of those, as you would probably be approaching $500 million. And then the growth of the acreage itself, I think the land group, Van and his guys and the men and women of his land group, that they increased the Delaware Basin position from 119,000 acres to 152,000 acres. If you remember when we went public in 2012 and we were establishing this as an area of interest, we began with $7,500. So we've gone from $7,500 to over $150,000. I didn't want that to go without being missed and that you have growing third-party revenues from customers out there. in the basin, and these are really the blue chip companies, and we've tried to be careful. Also, I've always believed, you know, I've been in this business 40 years, so I started with $270,000 today, and I think you'd put our assets all together, you know, approaching $10 billion. And one thing is just kind of we're more of a tortoise than a hare, again, a little bit by a little bit year after year. And slide K on page 14 shows you that it's been steady since we went public. And we see for the foreseeable with the number of locations that Tom and his team have been putting together, the growth of the midstream, Vann's acquisition team, that This will continue and should be there. Billy Stroop is saving money on the cost, but he's also doing innovations that make us more capital efficient, such as using these modern rigs to come in. And his MaxCom room is... Tribal Fract, am I saying that right?

You are, Joe, yes.

They give me a hard time on some of my pronunciations, but that's been a big add. And you can see the outperformance that we've had over the years on slide O, you know, compared to S&P 500, oil price, XOP. And I think that's a lot of what we have to offer, a consistent performance. performance with us with a strong balance sheet you know with our leverage ratio less than one and we intend to continue to keep an eye on the balance sheet because we're shareholders too and look for ways to boost the dividend so I do want you also to know that look we're available to you if you've got questions You need answers. Mac is really good, welcomes your questions. Brian will take them. If you come visit us, we'll buy you lunch or breakfast and we'll have a more extensive. So we want to be open because we're proud of what we're getting done and it's kind of the old fashioned pick and shovel method and little by little and And we think our people on staff are working, trying to get better every day. It's corny to say that, get better every day, and help the team get better, but that's what we aim for. And I think you can see it's from where we were a year ago to where we are today and the outlook going forward, we're still making very steady progress up and to the right. So with that, I'm going to sign off, but know our phone lines are open if you need further follow-up and information, and thank you for taking the time that you have to talk to us as well as study.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation today. This concludes today's program.