Vital Energy, Inc.

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Vital Energy Inc's fourth quarter 2024 earnings conference call. My name is Jericho and I'll be your operator for today. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. We will be conducting a question and answer session after the financial and operations report. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded for replay purposes. It is now my pleasure to introduce Mr. Ron Hagan, Vice President, Investor Relations. You may proceed, sir.

Thank you and good morning. Joining me today are Jason Pigan, President and Chief Executive Officer, Brian Limmerman, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Dee Hill, Senior Vice President, Chief Operating Officer, as well as additional members of our management team. During today's call, we'll be making forward-looking statements. These statements, including those describing our beliefs, goals, expectations, forecasts, and assumptions, are intended to be covered by the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Our actual results may differ from these forward-looking statements for a variety of reasons, many of which are beyond our control. In addition, we'll be making reference to non-GAP financial measures. Reconciliation to GAP financial measures are included in the press release and presentation we issued yesterday afternoon. Press release and presentation can be accessed at our website at .pidolinnergy.com. We'll now turn the call over to Jason Pigan, President and Chief Executive Officer. Good morning and thank you for joining us.

Cell Energy again delivered outstanding results this quarter. The results would not have been possible without our relentless pursuit to improve the quality of our assets over the last five years. In regard to taking your questions, there are four areas I would like to review. First, our fourth quarter 2024 results. Second, our significant inventory additions and how they will enhance our capital efficiency going forward. Third, our 2025 outlook which combines disciplined investments and a focus on generating free cash flow. Finally, how we will reduce debt and maintain a strong balance sheet. Let's talk about the fourth quarter. Cell Energy had strong financial and operating results this quarter. Consistent with our performance all year in 2024, results were driven by production that exceeded the top end of guidance for both total and oil production. We benefited from strong production from our point energy assets acquired last September. Capital investments were a little higher than guidance. This was primarily due to increased working interest and a carried interest on some bolt-on acquisitions that we developed during the quarter. This impacted DNC capital by about $17 million and increased our net production from the last quarter package. We continue to make significant, sustainable progress, reducing operating costs on our acquired properties. This was our first full quarter operating the point assets and we are very happy with our results. We outperformed our LOE guidance by 5% delivering at cost of $8.89 per BOE. Some projects were deferred to capture cost efficiencies and will bring our first quarter LOE a little higher, but both quarters together are expected to average around $9.20 per BOE. We continue to be on track to reduce LOE below $9 per BOE by the end of 2025. Financial performance beat expectations as we delivered strong EBITDAX and adjusted free cash flow. Some timing nuances are shifting the resulting debt pay down into the first quarter. Specifically, a $75 million increase in accounts receivable related to the closing of the point acquisition and $20 million in non-budgeted acquisitions. January net debt was already down $50 million below year-end levels and we expect total one-queue debt pay down to be approximately $100 million. Now, let me talk about the significant and positive move in our oil-weighted inventory. Since early 2024, we have increased our total inventory by more than 10%. We now have approximately 925 oil-weighted locations representing more than 11 years of drilling at our current development pace. Recent inventory additions were related to the delineation of deeper targets and lateral length increases that provided sustainable drilling cost efficiencies. I'll drill a little deeper on these changes and provide some additional color. First, the average lateral length of our inventory is now 12,800 feet, a 16% increase over last year. In total, we have increased future developable lateral footage by approximately 30%. These changes have been instrumental in improving the quality of our inventory and reducing our average break-even oil price to approximately $53 per barrel WTI even as we extended out our inventory life. This makes our wells more price resilient and supports our ability to maintain current levels of capital efficiency well into the future. Next, we de-risk significant inventory in deeper horizons. In 2024, we tilled 16 wells in the Wolf Camp C, the Wolf Camp D, and the Barnett. These tests gave us a robust understanding of productivity in the newer formations, the Wolf Camp C and the Barnett, allowing us to add inventory in those formations for the first time. The Wolf Camp D wells had an average lateral length of more than 15,000 feet, giving us additional long lateral locations in the Wolf Camp D. Third, we have new operational competencies and have successfully used shaped well bores to extend lateral lengths, access stranded resources, and enhance returns. Our inventory now consists of approximately 120 horseshoe-shaped wells that convert two ,000-foot wells into one ,000-foot well, improving break-evens by $15 to $20 per barrel WTI. We are now taking this concept another step, drilling J-shaped wells that convert three ,000-foot wells into two ,000-foot wells. We are drilling our first package later in 2025 with the opportunity to convert approximately 130 straight wells to around 90 J-shaped wells, reducing break-evens on those wells by around $10 per barrel WTI. A novel way we have combined leasing and shaped well bores is through our 8-mile project, which we are about to begin drilling. We acquired a stranded section in the heart of the Midland Basin that would have been developed with ,000-foot laterals. Utilizing horseshoe-shaped well designs, we will drill 12 ,000-foot wells that we estimate to have an average WTI break-even of around $40 per barrel. Paid approximately $11 million for this section, and with the additional carry, we will have acquired these wells for an estimated $1.2 million per well in an area where operators consistently pay three to four times that amount. In addition to the 925 wells we currently have in inventory, we have identified an additional 250 wells that can be added in the future with further delineation. Now, turning to more details on our 2025 outlook, we expect to deliver 135 to 140,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, including 62.5 to 66.5 thousand barrels of oil per day. Our full-year 2025 oil production expectation is about 2,000 barrels per day less than our initial 2025 outlook. This is due to the underperformance of a package of wells in Upton County that came online in late 2024 and included tests focused on delineating future development inventory, as well as delays in our drilling program. These delays pushed out the completions and turned in line timing for a few packages of which will defer production until later in the year. Total capital investments, excluding non-budgeted acquisitions, are expected to be $825 to $925 million. Current commodity prices, we expect our plan to deliver adjusted free cash flow of approximately $330 million at $70 oil. We have continued to optimize our capital costs, expecting to invest less in 2025 while shifting more capital to the Delaware basin and completing the same amount of net lateral feet as 2024. Efforts to high-grade our development plan and extend laterals is expected to drive a significant improvement in capital efficiency in 2025 versus 2024. Our focus today is squarely on optimizing our existing assets and maximizing cash flow for our investors. As a result, we will de-emphasize potential large-scale acquisitions and allocate substantially all free cash flow to reduce our net debt. Thanks again for joining us this morning. Operator, you can now open the line for questions.

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue. If you would like to withdraw your question, simply press star 1 again. Our first question comes from the line of Neil Dingman from Truit Security. Please go ahead.

Morning, Jason. Thanks for you and the team for all the details. My first question was just jumping straight to the early point energy activity that you were talking about, and I'm just wondering, specifically, results here, just looking at a couple of slides and things, but the results appear to be as good, I would call it, if not better than I was at least expecting. I'm just wondering, could you all, you, Katie, the team, maybe discuss how you're thinking about the early results versus your prior estimates and what you're doing to drive this upside?

Good morning, Neil, and I'll turn that over to Katie.

Hi, good morning, Neil. We love this asset. There's a few areas that we're outperforming early, but the integration has been really smooth. We're seeing better than expected downtime on the base wells. Some of the early new wells are coming online stronger than expected. We've already been able to drive down some of the LOE costs and are seeing some capital efficiency that's going to carry into 25. So, really excited about the performance in Q4, like you said, outperforming our initial expectations.

Awesome. Okay. And then just secondly, Jason, just something you got into a little bit on your prepared recent Upton County well doing ACED activity. It just seemed a few of the wells, as you mentioned, were a little bit under your expectations. I'm just wondering, could you discuss there also what might be the potential issues and would you call this sort of just limited to an isolated area? Yeah, thank you.

The Upton County wells are just more part of our program this year. We took CORE on that location. It's actually what has fostered us to drill a Barnett well out there. The primary issues were related to Wolf Camp A and lower Sprayberry wells. These were newer formations. We had traded data with an offset operator where performance was great. And we wanted to test these wells. These are kind of the east edge of the play. And we wanted to test these zones before we incorporated them into full development as we moved west. And they just, those wells were not as strong as we would have liked. We've done multiple tests in other zones that we highlighted. We drilled 16 wells in the Barnett, Wolf Camp C, Wolf Camp D last year, and our production was outperforming each quarter. The challenge is these were coming online right as we gave guidance. And when wells come on that are disappointing earlier in the year, it just takes a little time to catch up. And what you'll see in our program is these capital efficiencies we've highlighted. We'll continue to grow production throughout the year. We'll go through a little dip and then grow production back. But unfortunate, we had a lot of successes. And if you think of the 140 wells that we added in these deeper targets, they're just part of the business, but unfortunate time for us. No plans to complete any other wells in that area this year. Rigs are moving to other Midland areas. And then the Delaware basin focused primarily on point. All of our inventory that we highlighted this morning has taken into account those impacts.

That's how I was going to ask. That slide that shows the 925 locations and the 250 upside, that's not impacted now? No, sir. They're adjusted for it. Thank you. Thank you, Neil.

Our next question comes from the light of Zach Arham of JPMorgan. Please, go ahead.

Good morning. In the inventory slide, you added 140 locations in the deeper zone that you talked about earlier. Could you just give us a little more detail on those locations, really just looking for a bit more color on the zones and geographic areas where those wells sit?

Yeah, so I'd say on slide nine in our deck, we highlight all of the tests that we've done or some of the tests that were used to inform these decisions to add them. So we've gotten really good results from Wolf Camp DEC as we've talked about lateral link, how that helps us in these areas because they're deeper zones. The team is able to drill longer laterals, which really enhances the economics in those areas. And I'd say that, again, the well additions are kind of sprinkled evenly among those different formations.

Thanks, Jason. And then that follow up, you added some core acreage in Midland County at a very low cost. You mentioned 1.2 million per location. You all seem to be a little bit further along in drilling the horseshoe laterals than some of your peers. Do you see more of an opportunity set to add these kind of stranded single section acreage blocks in core areas? Is that something you all could potentially take advantage of?

Yeah, it's something the team is very focused on this year. I mean, there's really when we think of A&D, there's only two types of things that we are focused on, and that is white space next to our acreage position where we can make 10,000 foot wells, 15,000 foot wells, and things like this. The team did a great job of being flexible. A lot of times these opportunities come because the leases are expiring and things like that. We jumped through a few hoops because we bought this in December and we're going to be drilling it here pretty soon. So being able to move it into the schedule and then the economics work for us because you're taking what a normal operator would have 5,000 foot wells. We make them 10,000 foot wells. On the Diamondback release, they pay much more for well than we pay for this, us being just over a million dollars. So I really think our team does a great job of thinking outside the box to create incremental value and being flexible with rig schedules to be able to incorporate things like this.

Thank you. Thank you.

Our next question comes from the line of Noah Humness from Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone. For my first question, I was just wondering on the impact of steel tariffs, if we see these tariffs last more than 12 months, what kind of impact do you think that would have on your TAPEX budget?

We're secured out through most of 25 on OCTG and that's really where we see the most exposure to potential tariffs. If it extends out into 26, we have a little bit less contracted. I think that there's opportunity probably for some of the service providers to start to pass through some of those costs, but very little exposure this year.

Gotcha. And then for my second question, how should we think about the decision tree between debt pay down versus the small acquisitions that you guys have done? How could we think about debt pay down moving forward if more of these deals do pop up?

We're going to be entirely focused on debt pay down as the number one thing. It takes opportunities like this eight mile, I think, to get us off of that strategy. So we're really trying to put substantially all of our free cash flow to debt pay down this year, but when you have an opportunity to bring in $40 break even wells at a relatively low cost per well, we'll do those every day. And then the lateral addition, the other thing we're really looking at is just lateral extensions. When we go from a 10,000 foot lateral to a 15,000 foot lateral, it only takes, I think, 1500 feet to equal a 5% improvement in well cost. So when you're going an extra 5000 feet, you reduce break even by $5 or more. So those are real ways that we can improve the quality of our inventory. When you look at our inventory, we have a long length of inventory, and our focus is how do we take our length of inventory and improve the quality of the average well in that stack of inventory? And that's what you're seeing from the team is this push to increase lateral length to improve the quality of our inventory.

Great. Thanks so much.

Our next question comes from the line of John Abbott from Wolf Research. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning.

Just

curious. So when you, it's really about your drilling program this year, and you were testing some new zone in Upton for some new areas there. When you think about your drilling program, how much of your drilling program is actually aimed toward testing new zones and new potential? And then my second question as a follow-up is like, you've talked about these 250 upside locations. How do you think about the time progression in terms of de-resting those?

Hi, good morning, John. When we look at the 25 program, the bulk of our capital early in the year is dedicated to the point asset, really high return, high confidence locations. In the second half of the year, we have a mix between the rest of the southern Delaware and Midland. Very little of our capital in 25 is going towards risk or appraisal opportunities. We've done a good job over the last couple of years proving out inventory, and at this stage are really in co-development mode. As we look at the upside, 250 locations that you mentioned, we're not in a rush to delineate those. Those are in deep zones. We have high confidence in them. Some of the 140 that we've added that have direct offset, direct subsurface control. We have an opportunity to really work our way through that deliberately, and it's not a substantial portion of the outlook in 25 or in 26. I think there's a multi-year effort that it would take to start to pull that 250 into the core.

I appreciate it. If I could squeeze just one really quick other question in there. You plan to catch up in the second half of this year. Any idea what the exit rate would be for this year by year-end for oil?

High 60s is where we expect to be. The shape of the production profile this year is kind of a V-shape, so we'll have a little mid-year and then kind of ramp up at the end of the year. Thank you very much. All right.

Thank you. No further questions. It's time for Mr. Ron Higgins to turn the call back over to you.

Thank you very much for joining us for our call this morning. We appreciate your interest in vital energy. This concludes our call.

Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect.