Matador Resources Q4 2024 Earnings Report

Matador Resources EPS Results

• Actual EPS: $1.83
• Consensus EPS: $1.88
• Beat/Miss: Missed by -$0.05
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

Matador Resources Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $970.37 million
• Expected Revenue: $967.10 million
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$3.27 million
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

Matador Resources Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q4 2024
• Date: 2/18/2025
• Time: After Market Closes
• Conference Call Date: Wednesday, February 19, 2025
• Conference Call Time: 10:00AM ET

Matador Resources (NYSE:MTDR) Company, an independent energy company, engages in the exploration, development, production, and acquisition of oil and natural gas resources in the United States. It operates through two segments, Exploration and Production; and Midstream. The company primarily holds interests in the Wolfcamp and Bone Spring plays in the Delaware Basin in Southeast New Mexico and West Texas. It also operates the Eagle Ford shale play in South Texas; and the Haynesville shale and Cotton Valley plays in Northwest Louisiana. In addition, the company conducts midstream operations in support of its exploration, development, and production operations. Further, it provides natural gas processing and oil transportation services; and oil, natural gas, and produced water gathering services, as well as produced water disposal services to third parties. The company sells natural gas to unaffiliated independent marketing companies and unaffiliated midstream companies. The company was formerly known as Matador Holdco, Inc. and changed its name to Matador Resources Company in August 2011. Matador Resources Company was founded in 2003 and is headquartered in Dallas, Texas.

Matador Resources Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Presentation

[Operator]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Fourth Quarter and Full Year twenty twenty four Matador Resources Company Earnings Conference Call. My name is Lisa, 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.

[Operator]

As a reminder, this conference is being recorded for the replay purposes, and the replay will be available on the company's website for one year as discussed in the company's earnings press release issued yesterday. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Mac Schmidt, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations for Matador. Mr. Schmidt, you may proceed.

[Mac Schmitz, VP, IR at Matador Resources Company]

Thank you, Lisa. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for Matador's fourth quarter and full year twenty twenty four 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 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.

[Mac Schmitz, VP, IR at Matador Resources Company]

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 ks and any subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10 Q. In addition to our earnings press release that we issued yesterday, I would like to remind everyone that you can find a slide presentation in connection with the fourth quarter and full year twenty twenty four earnings release under our 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.

[Mac Schmitz, VP, IR at Matador Resources Company]

Joe?

[Joseph Wm. Foran, Founder, CEO & Chairman of the Board at Matador Resources Company]

Thank you, Meg, and thank you

[Joseph Wm. Foran, Founder, CEO & Chairman of the Board at Matador Resources Company]

all for listening in today. I would like to begin by thanking everybody for the thought and effort they put into their notes, but I'd also like to start out by revising what we consider most important when we take over a property like the Emeritave. It's a $2,000,000,000 deal, obviously it's going to have a big impact. So how do we treat that? And we really treat it like we do all of our other properties.

[Joseph Wm. Foran, Founder, CEO & Chairman of the Board at Matador Resources Company]

For past forty years, as I've done this job as CEO, we put an emphasis on year to year growth. We think that's the most important number. You can look at other statistics and there are I would say they're all important, but for us the most important is year over year growth. At the same time, when we buy a property, the first thing we try to do is look for the efficiency gains that we can do. Also a development plan that we can do.

[Joseph Wm. Foran, Founder, CEO & Chairman of the Board at Matador Resources Company]

And from there, we work to incorporate it and assess what you can do. The Emeridev properties were special because it's such great quality rock that gives us a lot choice. Most times when people sell things, it's not their best rock. But in Meredith case, it was really good rock. They've done a good job operating it and we wanted to find those, what else could we do?

[Joseph Wm. Foran, Founder, CEO & Chairman of the Board at Matador Resources Company]

And we could easily, we put a rig out there, our first rig went out there nine days after acquiring the property. So we could have put more rigs out there and easily increased, the production in a sequential basis. But we thought it was more important, to set it up for long term by the year over year growth standard. And in that regard, for forty years in buying properties for Matador, in those forty years, we've grown a little over 20% a year for forty years. And that's kind of the standard we have.

[Joseph Wm. Foran, Founder, CEO & Chairman of the Board at Matador Resources Company]

And we feel the Ameriadab properties will meet that standard, particularly as we organize a drilling plan, how exactly we want to develop it between the development wells and the step out wells. So, we thought a little time on that should be done. Now, we will have, we have one of the ways of the efficiency is our batch drilling that we've done there and that has saved us an estimated $30,000,000 to $50,000,000 by drilling them in the batch mode and then bringing them on. But it does have an effect on the sequential growth is that which is essentially a timing problem. It's not a reserve problem, it's a timing deal.

[Joseph Wm. Foran, Founder, CEO & Chairman of the Board at Matador Resources Company]

And in the first quarter of last year I mean fourth quarter of last year, in the first half, we only put two wells online because we had a big group coming up behind it. And so in the next forty five days or so, we'll probably bring on his 30 wells or more. And you can see what I mean, it's a timing problem. If we had closed and taken over AmeriDev two weeks earlier, we wouldn't have this discussion of whether we have a sequential problem or a miss as some of you all described it. And so we ask that if you're uncertain about our timing on thanks, please give us a call.

[Joseph Wm. Foran, Founder, CEO & Chairman of the Board at Matador Resources Company]

But the year over year matters because I can report that we expect to have growth approximately 30% for the first quarter of this year compared to the first quarter last year. Second quarter is going to be about the same 29% or 30%. Third quarter, again 20% or more. And by the time we face the drilling program in the fourth quarter, we think that will be comparable numbers as well. So we're very excited about this.

[Joseph Wm. Foran, Founder, CEO & Chairman of the Board at Matador Resources Company]

We're not seeing any disappointment, but want you to know that, I don't want to tell you, how to do, you know, your analysis. It's certainly understandable why some people want to do sequential. But in this case, I think you have to look at the year over year numbers. And when you look at the total reserve picture, for us, Year over year from the fourth quarter of twenty twenty three to the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four, you see that we've grown our production from like 4,600,000 boes to over 6,000,000,000. And that's what I think matters has our shareholders increased their assets.

[Joseph Wm. Foran, Founder, CEO & Chairman of the Board at Matador Resources Company]

Yes. And that's why we felt so comfortable raising our dividend. Could we have done more? Yes. I think that we could have easily done some more, but it's probably more prudent given the volatility of commodity prices to wait until the fall when we've typically given a raise.

[Joseph Wm. Foran, Founder, CEO & Chairman of the Board at Matador Resources Company]

But wanted to express to you our confidence. And second is to note the insider buy that has occurred. You had over 30 transactions by the senior management. That's SVPs and higher VPs. And so you have that, but even more important statistic to us and comforting to me personally is that over 95% of the staff are participating in the employee stock purchase plan.

[Joseph Wm. Foran, Founder, CEO & Chairman of the Board at Matador Resources Company]

So everybody here, they've been here at any time at all has become a shareholder and an owner. And if you've ever attended our annual meetings, you'd meet many people, a good percentage of them are shareholders. They've been shareholders for forty years or more, going back to when we had the partnerships and the like. So, there's great confidence and we thought it was most prudent not to rush in with trying to drill wells and boost production, but it was ever been important and more so to look at containing the cost and making sure of what we wanted to do next. So saving $30,000,000 to $50,000,000 should not be disregarded, but taking into account of whether you want to emphasize year over year growth or quarter to quarter growth and look at the timing when you're bringing on wells.

[Joseph Wm. Foran, Founder, CEO & Chairman of the Board at Matador Resources Company]

So if two weeks is the difference, I would go with the year over year growth that I mentioned is going to be 20% to 30%. So with that, I'd like to open it up to questions, Mac, but give you an idea of how we evaluate it and why we've emphasized year over year growth, but we still think it's important to look at sequential and that's why we provide you those numbers itself. But our personal view is that year over year number is the most important.

[Mac Schmitz, VP, IR at Matador Resources Company]

Lisa, we're ready for, to jump into the queue and ready for the first question.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our first question for today will be coming from Neal Dingin of Tuohy Securities. Your line is open.

[Neal Dingmann, Managing Director - Energy Research at Truist Securities]

Thanks. Good morning, Joe and team. And Joe, I just wanted to say before I ask my question, I thought you all did a really nice job this time on the slides of really showing the capital efficiencies and other upside that you have such as the midstream. So I guess that part takes me to my first question. And my first question, I'd like to focus on the midstream.

[Neal Dingmann, Managing Director - Energy Research at Truist Securities]

Specifically, you all obviously have one of the larger now Permian infrastructure systems. I think you're talking about nearly 300,000,000 in EBITDA alone. And I'm just wondering based on this, should we assume that now that system is largely developed given the a bit lower CapEx of $120,000,000 to $180,000,000 this year? And then secondly, are there opportunities to, I don't know, maybe bring in a partner or do something to further demonstrate and maybe monetize the value of that system?

[Joseph Wm. Foran, Founder, CEO & Chairman of the Board at Matador Resources Company]

Neil, that's really a good question. It's something we talk about nearly every day, some of those questions. And I'd simply say is that as long as we're active out there in that basin, we're going to be looking to extend it because the reason we got into it in the first place is going back to when we were going public was that there was real flow assurance problems. And we didn't want to go public and immediately run-in to flow assurance problems. So that's where we started.

[Joseph Wm. Foran, Founder, CEO & Chairman of the Board at Matador Resources Company]

Greg Krug has been our leader in the company and has done a marvelous job. Our first year of operations we had EBITDA of $30,000,000 This year we have $300,000,000 So he's made not only the reservoir engineers comfortable by having that flow assurance and the cash flow and our CFO is happy that they know that we're going to have the cash flow, but he's also created a very profitable business and given us some good options going forward. So it's hard to say because it's we still feel early years and we're expanding our areas of interest just like with the Ameriadiv over to that Southeast corner of Southeastern New Mexico. And, but we're looking at other opportunities. It's just a great area.

[Joseph Wm. Foran, Founder, CEO & Chairman of the Board at Matador Resources Company]

I've worked it now forty years to keep expanding, but to do it in a conservative way.

[Gregg Krug, EVP, Marketing and Midstream Strategy at Matador Resources Company]

Yes. Neil, this is Greg Craig. I was going to kind of comment a little bit. As far as we're going to do we're going to be looking at whatever enhances our flow assurance out there for both Matador and our third party customers. I think those are the projects that we're going to be looking at.

[Gregg Krug, EVP, Marketing and Midstream Strategy at Matador Resources Company]

And Joe alluded to the Ameriadab piece. We actually along with that acquisition, we have 180 miles of pipeline that came with that. That's not actually part of San Mateo. So we're always looking for those opportunities to actually make the footprint of basically where our acreage positions are at. Those are the expansion type of projects we're looking for.

[Operator]

Thank you. One moment for the next question.

[Joseph Wm. Foran, Founder, CEO & Chairman of the Board at Matador Resources Company]

Thank you, Neal.

[Operator]

And our next question will be coming from the line of Zack Parham of JPMorgan. Your line is open.

[Zach Parham, Executive Director, Equity Research at JP Morgan]

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question. Just wanted to ask

[Zach Parham, Executive Director, Equity Research at JP Morgan]

on your D and C cost guide. You took it down to $880,000 per foot, that's down 3% year over year. And your 2024 D and C costs came in quite a bit below the initial guide. Could you just give us a little color on where your leading edge D and C costs are today and maybe talk about your ability to continue to drive those D and C costs lower going forward?

[Christopher Calvert, Executive VP & COO at Matador Resources Company]

Yes. Hey, Zach, this is Chris Calvert. I think first off, thank you for the question. I think we'd refer excuse me, refer to Slide D in the slide deck to kind of highlight the data that you're speaking to. I think it's safe to say when your full year 25 D and C per foot is below your full year twenty twenty four D and C per foot, we're kind of at a leading edge.

[Christopher Calvert, Executive VP & COO at Matador Resources Company]

I think from an efficiency standpoint, we've made great strides in optimizing simul frac, increasing the use of trimal frac, reducing days on well, partnerships with vendors, strong partnerships with vendors to make sure that we're in win win contracts from both the drilling and the completion side. So I think depending what you consider leading edge, I would say full year 2025, '3 percent below full year 2024, I think that is a leading edge. And I think that is done via the competence and the great job that the operations team here has done. And And so I think looking into 2025, if you noticed in the release, we increased our trimel frac use from 16 wells to 40. And so I think when you look at the cost of savings associated with that, that all contributes to that leading edge D and C cost per foot going down.

[Christopher Calvert, Executive VP & COO at Matador Resources Company]

And so I think it is something we're excited about. We should be proud of that. I think we are a leading edge innovator in operational efficiencies. I think that flows through to one of the highest margin operators in the Delaware Basin. I think that's something that we're also extremely proud of on Slide K.

[Christopher Calvert, Executive VP & COO at Matador Resources Company]

And so I think we do appreciate you noticing that and it's something that we work hard to continue to push forward on.

[Operator]

Thank you. One moment for the next question. And our next question is coming from the line of Scott Hallum of RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open.

[Scott Hanold, Managing Director - Energy Research at RBC Capital Markets]

Thanks. Hey, Joe, you gave a sort of good overview of why you see some of the ebbs and flows in production and the focus on sort of year over year. Could you address the capital side too? And I think there when you look at fourth quarter, it came in a little bit higher and I think first quarter set up a little bit higher. So when you look at capital, like how do you think that's going to ebb and flow?

[Scott Hanold, Managing Director - Energy Research at RBC Capital Markets]

And what are some of the puts and takes within the range of the roughly $1,400,000,000 to $1,700,000,000 that you all have for 2025?

[Joseph Wm. Foran, Founder, CEO & Chairman of the Board at Matador Resources Company]

Well, good question. And breaking that down, I would say this is when we take over a property as we did here, the first thing we look at, where can we deploy some capital that would in the short term that would improve the operating expenses, for example, over the long term. So the savings that we're having in reducing the operating expenses are going to pay off that capital in pretty short order. And that's as I said, I don't want to take away from the way people may use sequential comparisons. We just think that it's the year over year is a more important number.

[Joseph Wm. Foran, Founder, CEO & Chairman of the Board at Matador Resources Company]

And illustrating it's hard to give you the on the capital expenditures and say, well, this is really going to cut expenses ahead of time, we don't do that until this call, but we used a lot of that CapEx, early CapEx to improve the operating expenses. And Glenn, you might give a little more detail on that. So that saves us more over time to do it upfront rather than to be in the property for ninety days and then undertake it.

[Glenn Stetson, EVP, Production at Matador Resources Company]

That's right. Scott, this is Glenn Stetson. I would just say, yes, echo what Joe said is we got on the Emeritus properties and immediately got to work and accelerated the completions of those 11 wells, the Firethorn and Pimento wells. And along with that, we did some facility upgrades to accommodate that new production and also to bring the facilities up to Matador standards. And in doing so, we were able to reduce our OpEx, as Joe pointed out, to the tune of $2,000,000 a month.

[Glenn Stetson, EVP, Production at Matador Resources Company]

And so those significant those savings are significant and realize them even quicker than we had anticipated. And one anecdote that plays into both the CapEx side and the operating side is that on those 11 wells, we recycled over one point or about 1,200,000 barrels of produced water for the fracturing operations on those 11 wells. So I think synergies across the board that resulted in a really nice quarter.

[Joseph Wm. Foran, Founder, CEO & Chairman of the Board at Matador Resources Company]

Well, and also I want to shout out to Reese and his group for the very professional way they operate those properties when they had them up for sale and then afterwards as we closed the deal as they were very professional, very cooperative and I would say they didn't they maintained the high level of equipment and operations and they didn't have a short term approach. So shout out to Reese and we look forward to having a chance to work with him again.

[Operator]

Thank you. One moment for the next question. And our next question is coming from the line of Tim Rezvan of KeyBanc. Your line is open.

[Tim Rezvan, Managing Director & Equity Research Analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets]

Hey, good morning folks. Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to ask what drove the decision to kind of put a bigger spotlight on the Cotton

[Tim Rezvan, Managing Director & Equity Research Analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets]

Valley assets? Are you seeing kind of inbound inquiries on that? Because it doesn't seem to really be a need to sort of sell that now with leverage at one times and coming down pretty steadily. So should we think about that as you hang in a shingle like a for sale sign on that Cotton Valley asset? Just any color would be helpful.

[Joseph Wm. Foran, Founder, CEO & Chairman of the Board at Matador Resources Company]

Yes. Well, thank you. The Cotton Valley assets, we've had them a long time. When we did the deal with Chesapeake Years ago, we only sold them the Haynesville formation down there and we reserved all the uphold rights with these properties are. We had been drilling Cotton Valley wells to that point and so we're very experienced in that.

[Joseph Wm. Foran, Founder, CEO & Chairman of the Board at Matador Resources Company]

But when we went out to New Mexico, it was HBP by that deeper production, so there was no urgency. And shortly after that sale, gas prices declined. And it was better to be in oil primarily than the gas. And so it's all HBP, so there wasn't a hurry. And you were developing, at that time people were drilling the vertical wells, but now there has been horizontal drilling in that Cotton Valley that has yielded wells that are in the order of 5,000,000,000 cubic feet of gas, which if you have stable prices, you can make money.

[Joseph Wm. Foran, Founder, CEO & Chairman of the Board at Matador Resources Company]

But that's the second key is the ups and downs of gas prices has discouraged that, while you've had much better commodity prices with the oil out there in New Mexico. So it's one of economics. But now that you have gas seems to be rallying, you have these data centers, You have the liquids that can be taken out. It's starting to be more attractive, but we're not in any way trying to sell them. That's not the reason.

[Joseph Wm. Foran, Founder, CEO & Chairman of the Board at Matador Resources Company]

It just shows you that we have another card to play at the appropriate time. And we have also a very high net revenue interest because when we did the deal with Chesapeake, we reserved all the overrides that had been earned or acquired. So it's a prime we see it as a prime property, but let me turn it over to Ned or Tom, how you all feel about it, who planned our drilling program?

[Thomas Elsener, EVP - Reservoir Engineering and Senior Asset Manager at Matador Resources Company]

Sure, Tim. This is Tom Nelson, our EVP for Reservoir Engineering. We feel very confident in the Cotton Valley. And as Joe mentioned, we had drilled a well over about fifteen years ago. And I'd actually give Joe six pieces of gas U.

[Thomas Elsener, EVP - Reservoir Engineering and Senior Asset Manager at Matador Resources Company]

R. On that one mile well. I know today, our operations and coalitions teams would go in there and be capable of drilling a two mile well or 2.5 or even further perhaps. And I know they would certainly increase the proppant concentrations and the frac fluids and the stage intensities and improve the targeting and all the different things we've learned over the last fifteen years, I think, would go into significantly higher gas EORs than that. I think we're very proud of it.

[Thomas Elsener, EVP - Reservoir Engineering and Senior Asset Manager at Matador Resources Company]

There's a lot of vertical production in that area, but there's other horizontal wells also. And I agree with Joe. It's another card to play if we wanted to at some point. Several hundred feet of pay over there in the Cotton Valley and all the gas infrastructure from the Haynesville is already in place. And so I think it's something that we like to have in our toolbox.

[Operator]

Thank you. And our last call for today will be coming from Kevin McCurdy of Pickering Energy. Your line is open.

[Kevin MacCurdy, Managing Director at Pickering Energy Partners]

Hey, good morning, Joe. I wanted to ask your thoughts on uses of cash here. You forecast around $1,000,000,000 free cash flow in 2025 and you have a lot of unlike value in the midstream as your deck shows. Your leverage is pretty low. Are there other considerations for use of cash here above the dividend?

[Joseph Wm. Foran, Founder, CEO & Chairman of the Board at Matador Resources Company]

That's a great question, Kevin. And that there's a lot of ways to answer that. There's a lot of opportunities. And when we get around the table like we are now and guys talk about, well, I kind of feel this and I think we do that. It's really exciting, because there are a lot of opportunities here and we want we talk about profitable growth at measured pace.

[Joseph Wm. Foran, Founder, CEO & Chairman of the Board at Matador Resources Company]

So we don't want to try to expand too fast or too slow. It's a Goldilocks type of arrangement. And we look at the ideas that we have. We have ten to fifteen years of inventory. We have a balance sheet that even after doing a $2,000,000,000 deal, it's the strongest financial position we've been in.

[Joseph Wm. Foran, Founder, CEO & Chairman of the Board at Matador Resources Company]

We have over a $3,000,000,000 line of credit with our banks of which we've only committed to $2,000,000,000 2 point 5 billion dollars And so there's plenty of dry powder there. We don't want to to try to and that's why we say instead of trying to grow X percent a year, that's why we say profitable growth at a measured pace. So it depends on all the considerations. And, but we're we've got all these opportunities in New Mexico. They're growing with the drill bit and we're keeping pace with nine rigs running on the drill bit that earn in a 50% rate of return.

[Joseph Wm. Foran, Founder, CEO & Chairman of the Board at Matador Resources Company]

We have these opportunities on the midstream, which is a fee based business instead of a commodity based business. It gives us a little more stability to our future earnings outlook. We have Louisiana and that we just don't want to get greedy and don't want to go too fast, but don't want to go too slow. And so we're, we've in the efficiency gains that we're getting are leading to higher returns, just drilling one vertical, these horseshoe wells are example of the efficiency that we're doing. Lateral link has grown to where we're over.

[Joseph Wm. Foran, Founder, CEO & Chairman of the Board at Matador Resources Company]

We're now doing over 10,000 feet per well on the completions. The EURs are better. This rock that we acquired from both Advance and Ameriadeth is leading to 10% better recoveries. So I mean it's a multitude of opportunities and trying to manage it to say it's kind of like a football coach. He's got a really good running back and he's got a really good passing quarterback.

[Joseph Wm. Foran, Founder, CEO & Chairman of the Board at Matador Resources Company]

So does he call more plays for the running back or the passer or double reverse to the wide receiver? I don't know. But we all discuss it. And again, the fact that we are all shareholders and particularly among management that we're steadily buying should give you an idea that we're resolving that internally in a way that's best for the company and best for the shareholders that we're all stakeholders and really excited by the opportunities. But we also know that you can certainly have things like COVID or depression, gas prices have been zero at Waha where we've had to pay money to take our gas.

[Joseph Wm. Foran, Founder, CEO & Chairman of the Board at Matador Resources Company]

So you want to be careful on that. There's a lot of matters to take into consideration. But we think we have the staff has matured together. We've all grown up together. Our discussions are lively, of what we want to do with this extra money, but we all agree and it's a corny expression.

[Joseph Wm. Foran, Founder, CEO & Chairman of the Board at Matador Resources Company]

I admit, proper growth at a measured pace, but it seems to fit us that if we can keep up for forty years, I've been in business, I started out with $270,000 and now we have $11,000,000,000 in assets and that's just growing 20% a year for forty years. And we're more of a tortoise than a hare maybe, but we went public back in 2012 at $12 a share and today we're approaching $60 So it's growth over a very turbulent time and we're looking forward to when it's a little less turbulent, but we're also ready because we made we want to be ready with lots of dry powder because we've made more progress in difficult times when others are sidelined by the opportunities that come up. So this is a room full of people that are owners and its measures on what is going to improve the stock price. And really grateful to those shareholders that have been in here since 1983 when we got started. So, and they keep coming up with good ideas.

[Joseph Wm. Foran, Founder, CEO & Chairman of the Board at Matador Resources Company]

And I look across there, Ned and his group of geologists, I mean, they come in with some good looking ideas. And Tom's team of he has he leads the teams in these various areas. They're always thinking of things and the Land Group, John and them, this brick by brick approach has generated a lot of opportunities and helped get us into areas that we didn't have. And so I have to tell you, we got a lot of work to do, but it's also work that we think will be rewarding to the other shareholders and to us. And I like our chances, I guess, is what I want to say.

[Joseph Wm. Foran, Founder, CEO & Chairman of the Board at Matador Resources Company]

And everybody is looking for capital efficiencies. I don't want to be silly, but Mac generally brings donuts for our prep session prior to this call. And I can tell he's trying to be more capital efficient because there's not as many as there was in the early days. So we're going to try to get him, but the dividend and let me just take a moment on the dividend is that, we like this steadily increasing dividend over time and you can see we started out with $0.1 and now we're at $1.25 dollars We would had a stronger dividend growth if things were a little less turbulent. And we do not see ourselves buying back stock.

[Joseph Wm. Foran, Founder, CEO & Chairman of the Board at Matador Resources Company]

We think that favors the short termers and not the people who've been in a while. But we like it. We want to be known as a company that year after year increases its dividend and now it has moved from $0.1 to $1.25 and we have many probably more individual shareholders than most companies do and the individuals like it and they come to our annual meeting and express that view and we invite all of you to attend our annual meeting and hear what they have to say. And we'd like you all coming to visit. And once you know everybody on the call, if you all come see us, we'll have lunch or breakfast and you'll get to meet, the staff.

[Joseph Wm. Foran, Founder, CEO & Chairman of the Board at Matador Resources Company]

We'll take all the questions that you've got. So with that, Brian Erman or Brian Willey, as two of our leaders, if you all know anything else we should say, please jump in now.

[Brian Willey, CFO & Executive VP at Matador Resources Company]

No, Joe. This is Brian. I think all very well said. I'll just we're excited about 2025 and the approaching $1,000,000,000 in cash flow is a great accomplishment. Joe mentioned at the beginning about growth and focus on growth and that's true from a production standpoint and that's true from a free cash flow perspective.

[Brian Willey, CFO & Executive VP at Matador Resources Company]

And so we're excited to be able to do that and be in a position where we can return value to our shareholders.

[Joseph Wm. Foran, Founder, CEO & Chairman of the Board at Matador Resources Company]

Ron, Erman?

[Bryan Erman, Executive VP, General Counsel & Head of M&A at Matador Resources Company]

No, I think you guys said

[Bryan Erman, Executive VP, General Counsel & Head of M&A at Matador Resources Company]

it well. I think we're really

[Bryan Erman, Executive VP, General Counsel & Head of M&A at Matador Resources Company]

excited about the results for 2024 and even

[Bryan Erman, Executive VP, General Counsel & Head of M&A at Matador Resources Company]

more excited about the opportunities that are in front of

[Bryan Erman, Executive VP, General Counsel & Head of M&A at Matador Resources Company]

us for 2025.

[Bryan Erman, Executive VP, General Counsel & Head of M&A at Matador Resources Company]

So I'm generally really excited about what we have in front of us.

[Joseph Wm. Foran, Founder, CEO & Chairman of the Board at Matador Resources Company]

Right. And Rob is our Chief Accounting Officer and kind of a guy who wears many other hats around here has done a real good job of finding research projects and managing the tax position to make contributions that don't show up in these kind of calls. But Rob has kept us on pace in the audit. I'm proud of the audit. Tell them how once again we had no questions.

[Robert Macalik, Executive VP & Chief Accounting Officer at Matador Resources Company]

That's right. Yes. No, I think for the last ten years we've been audited by KPMG, really proud of the of my team and what we've been able to do to really provide a very high quality financial close and definitely feel audited by the KPMG team and are really excited about looking forward to 2025. And as Brian said, all the opportunities there and continue to look for ways to chip away at the cash tax position any way we can.

[Joseph Wm. Foran, Founder, CEO & Chairman of the Board at Matador Resources Company]

But follow the rules.

[Robert Macalik, Executive VP & Chief Accounting Officer at Matador Resources Company]

Always. Always.

[Joseph Wm. Foran, Founder, CEO & Chairman of the Board at Matador Resources Company]

All right. But anyway, that's those are my closing remarks.

[Joseph Wm. Foran, Founder, CEO & Chairman of the Board at Matador Resources Company]

But again, if you have questions have been answered, give a call to Mac. We'll get some set up and have a visit. But the land guys deserve a lot of credit. Those guys, all the land men and women are out there trying to make deals all the time and really proud of the way they're building relationships and trying to make trades that please both sides.

[Mac Schmitz, VP, IR at Matador Resources Company]

Back to you, Lisa.

[Operator]

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation today. This concludes today's program. You may all disconnect.

Participants

Executives

• Mac Schmitz, VP, IR
• Joseph Wm. Foran, Founder, CEO & Chairman of the Board
• Gregg Krug, EVP, Marketing and Midstream Strategy
• Christopher Calvert, Executive VP & COO
• Glenn Stetson, EVP, Production
• Thomas Elsener, EVP - Reservoir Engineering and Senior Asset Manager
• Brian Willey, CFO & Executive VP
• Bryan Erman, Executive VP, General Counsel & Head of M&A
• Robert Macalik, Executive VP & Chief Accounting Officer

Analysts

• Neal Dingmann, Managing Director - Energy Research at Truist Securities
• Zach Parham, Executive Director, Equity Research at JP Morgan
• Scott Hanold, Managing Director - Energy Research at RBC Capital Markets
• Tim Rezvan, Managing Director & Equity Research Analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets
• Kevin MacCurdy, Managing Director at Pickering Energy Partners