Sitio Royalties Q4 2024 Earnings Report Earnings HistoryForecast Sitio Royalties EPS ResultsActual EPS$0.08Consensus EPS $0.13Beat/MissMissed by -$0.05One Year Ago EPSN/ASitio Royalties Revenue ResultsActual Revenue$155.10 millionExpected Revenue$149.00 millionBeat/MissBeat by +$6.10 millionYoY Revenue GrowthN/ASitio Royalties Announcement DetailsQuarterQ4 2024Date2/26/2025TimeAfter Market ClosesConference Call DateThursday, February 27, 2025Conference Call Time8:30AM ETConference Call ResourcesConference Call AudioConference Call TranscriptSlide DeckPress Release (8-K)Earnings HistorySTR ProfileSlide DeckFull Screen Slide DeckPowered by Sitio Royalties Q4 2024 Earnings Call TranscriptProvided by QuartrFebruary 27, 2025 ShareLink copied to clipboard.There are 10 speakers on the call. Operator00:00:00Hello and welcome everyone to the City of Realty's Fourth Quarter twenty twenty four Earnings Call. My name is Becky and I'll be your operator today. During the presentation, you can register a question by pressing star followed by one on your keypad. I will now hand over to your host, Alyssa Stephens, Vice President of Investor Relations to begin. Please go ahead. Speaker 100:00:25Thanks, operator. Good morning, and welcome to our fourth quarter and full year '20 '20 '4 conference call. By now, it is our hope that you have been through our materials. You can find our recent news release and some supplemental slides on our website under the Investor Relations section. I'm joined this morning by our CEO, Chris Conasenti and our CFO, Cary Oseka. Speaker 100:00:45After our brief prepared remarks, Chris, Cary and other members of our leadership team will be available to take your questions. Before we start, I would like to remind you that our discussion today may contain forward looking statements and non GAAP measures. Please refer to our earnings release, investor presentation and publicly filed documents for additional information regarding such forward looking statements and non GAAP measures. I will now turn the call over to Chris. Speaker 200:01:11Thanks, Elisa, and welcome, everyone. I want to publicly welcome Elisa Stevens to the Scitio team. She joined us early this year as our new VP of Investor Relations. Many of you may have met her already, but she is a great addition to Scitio. This has allowed Ross Wong to take on additional leadership responsibilities on our finance team. Speaker 200:01:30So let's get started. We will divide today's call into three segments. First, I will review our 2024 highlights and how we strengthened the business through accretive acquisitions and active management of our minerals. Second, Gary will summarize our recent financial results and our 2025 outlook. Lastly, we will review our key priorities for the year. Speaker 200:01:522024 was a strong year of execution for Scitio and we have a solid list of accomplishments. I'll hit the highlights. First, we delivered against our full year projections. We had record fourth quarter production of about 41,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, a 14% year over year increase and averaged over 39,000 barrels of oil equivalent for the year pro form a for the DJ Basin acquisition. We exceeded the high end of full year guidance even after raising guidance twice during the year. Speaker 200:02:22Our expenses and taxes fell within or slightly below our guidance range. Our solid results were due to the exceptional work of the entire team at Scitio, the quality of our land positions in the most prolific U. S. Basins, strong activity and well performance from our industry leading operators, accretive acquisitions and our differentiated asset management capabilities. Second, we continue to develop innovative efficiencies. Speaker 200:02:47This is one of our core competencies that differentiates us from our peers. Throughout 2024, we refined our proprietary custom built asset management applications, which allow us to process and analyze significantly more data per person. We can now automatically process more than 99% of the revenue check data we receive from our operators, reducing approximately 21,000,000 rows of data down to 100,000 records for our staff to review annually. Taking this a step further, we use AI models to interpret contracts that enable us to identify revenue payment discrepancies, producing a dashboard for further analysis by our team. In 2024, we captured $19,000,000 of missing revenue payments, offsetting over two thirds of our cash G and A. Speaker 200:03:34We have invested in our future both in terms of highly skilled people across the company and new technologies. Our relatively small investments in asset management systems will be returned many times over and we expect meaningful reductions in cash G and A costs per BOE as we continue to scale our minerals position. Next, we closed 16 high value acquisitions throughout the year. These were immediately accretive to discretionary cash flow per share and represented some of the highest return investments in our history. It was a standout year for consolidation of high return small and medium sized deals. Speaker 200:04:09FITIO has demonstrated its ability to negotiate deals outside of normal broad auction processes. Our practices are repeatable and the deals we've executed are impactful in the aggregate. It was a healthy year of deal flow for us with acquisitions totaling more than $350,000,000 including fourth quarter deals of approximately $140,000,000 The fourth quarter deals added 3,300 net royalty acres to our portfolio, primarily in the Delaware Basin. Number four, we are committed to a strong balance sheet and our capital structure is solid. In December, our borrowing base was increased to $925,000,000 an increase of $75,000,000 Year over year, our annual interest expense on a per BOE basis was down over 17% as we refinanced higher cost notes in late twenty twenty three. Speaker 200:05:02Our balanced capital structure, high quality assets and robust coverage ratios helped ensure financial flexibility, ample liquidity and access to future capital at attractive rates. Our senior notes continue to trade well above par, and we are one of two minerals companies currently accessing the public debt markets, which advantages our cost of capital. Lastly, we prioritize capital returns to shareholders and deliver value on a per share basis. In 2024, we returned $330,000,000 to owners, or over 70% of our discretionary cash flow. Since becoming public in mid-twenty twenty two, our cumulative return of capital to shareholders is nearly $850,000,000 including dividends and share buybacks. Speaker 200:05:46This represents nearly 30% of our current market capitalization. At current commodity prices, we expect that number to exceed $1,000,000,000 in 2025. This was a great year for us. We had a winning combination of execution, efficiency gains and acquisition activity that allowed us to maintain our strong balance sheet and return capital to shareholders. Importantly, our results underscore the repeatability of our business model. Speaker 200:06:12With that, I'll turn it over to Carrie to summarize our recent financial results and 2025 outlook. Speaker 300:06:18Thanks, Chris. For the fourth quarter, our results beat consensus estimates for production, adjusted EBITDA and discretionary cash flow. Adjusted EBITDA was $141,200,000 which was 4% higher than the prior quarter and reflected strong production and lower than expected cash G and A. Production was up 6% quarter over quarter, averaging nearly 41,000 BOE per day. We had a 9% increase in net turned in line wells in the quarter, which was driven by increased operator drilling and completion activity. Speaker 300:06:52We closed on approximately $140,000,000 of acquisitions late in the quarter. We are committed to returning capital to shareholders through cash dividends and opportunistic share repurchases. Our board declared a fourth quarter cash dividend of $0.41 per share. Payable on March 28 and during the fourth quarter, we repurchased 643,000 shares for $12,900,000 equating to $0.08 per share in repurchases. Importantly, this represents a total return of capital of $0.49 per share. Speaker 300:07:25At year end, we had about $80,000,000 remaining under our $200,000,000 repurchase authorization. Turning now to the balance sheet, we had $1,100,000,000 of debt outstanding with $437,200,000 of availability under our revolving credit facility at year end 2024. Our borrowing base was increased by $75,000,000 to $925,000,000 And despite our $140,000,000 of cash acquisitions in the fourth quarter, liquidity only decreased by $15,000,000 As we look to 2025, we expect activity levels to remain consistent with last year and have good visibility via 45 net line of sight wells and commentary from operators and their activity levels. We expect our oil production at the midpoint will be 18,500 barrels per day and total production will be just under 40,000 BOE per day at the midpoint. This represents a 3% increase over reported full year 2024 production. Speaker 300:08:28As a reminder, we do not forecast acquisitions or published guidance. However, history shows that we consistently create value through blocking and tackling with high return acquisitions and our pipeline remains strong. Please reference our materials for additional details. I'll hand it back to Chris. Speaker 200:08:46Thanks, Carrie. Before taking your questions, let me quickly discuss how we define and measure success at CITIO. Number one on the list is healthy deal flow. We have a proven team with relationships and technical experience across all the major U. S. Speaker 200:09:00Basins. We maintain strong relationships with large mineral owners and smaller mineral aggregators. Today, we continue to see consistent field flow and attractive opportunities that meet our criteria for risk adjusted returns. The continued market interest in M and A activity in the mineral space is increasingly drawing the attention of long term mineral owners, some who have held their minerals for more than twenty years and now appear more open to selling. Many have been holding for yield, but are recognizing that basin maturity along with development activity levels suggest favorable timing for a sale. Speaker 200:09:34We are very selective and the deals we consider must clear a high bar. In 2024, we evaluated more than 160 transactions and ultimately executed it on just 10% of those. From a net royalty acre standpoint, we acquired just 4% of what we screened. As a result, our 2024 deals had a weighted average unlevered IRR of more than 15% and next twelve month cash flow yield exceeding 25%, well above our underwrite thresholds. We will remain disciplined in our underwriting assumptions and will continue to look for the right deals to create value. Speaker 200:10:11Second is growth per share. We are focused on adding value on a per share basis. Our fourth quarter production was up 14% year over year, while our share count dropped 3%. Since becoming public, we have increased production per debt adjusted share by more than 50%, representing a 20% compound annual growth rate. We will continue to use free cash flow to maintain our balance sheet and return meaningful cash to shareholders. Speaker 200:10:39Third on the list is efficiency as measured by cash G and A per BOE, EBITDA margins and capturing missing revenue. We are in the early innings of realizing the full potential of our proprietary automation tools and applications that underpin our asset management system. Automation increases the value add of our professionals and maximizes the value of our assets. With this platform in place, we're positioned to seamlessly tack on additional assets, supporting our margins and cost effective growth in the future. Over the last three years, we have been very selective in how we have grown our business. Speaker 200:11:13Today, we have scale that can be leveraged to the advantage of our owners. Recent investments in people and new technologies will create sustainable efficiencies in the years ahead. In closing, Scitio is in a strong and advantaged position today in the minerals industry. Consolidation will continue and minerals assets will continue to migrate to bigger and more efficient companies like us. We will continue to employ our proprietary practices to prudently manage our assets, maintain financial strength and create long term value for our shareholders. Speaker 200:11:43Operator, we are now ready to take questions. Operator00:12:04Our first question is from Neil Dingmann with Taurus Securities. Neil, your line is now open. Please go ahead. Speaker 400:12:13Good morning guys. My first question just, could you talk about your various marketed deals and just wondering how those compare? There's been a lot of market deals out there, how that compares to the crisp number of deals that you all were able to complete? Speaker 200:12:26Hi, good morning, Neil. It's great to hear from you. Just a couple of comments on the M and A environment. You noted the deals we evaluated and the deals we did, so it was a robust year from a deal flow standpoint. The important thing Speaker 500:12:42to highlight really is the consistency Speaker 200:12:43of how we're delivering on the acquisition program. So you look at just the last couple of years quarter in quarter out, we continue to make these small and medium sized acquisitions. Our capital and our job here really is to allocate this capital most efficiently. Our capital is flowing to the highest rate of return opportunity. So as you can tell by the statistics that we mentioned in the call, we've looked at hundreds of thousands of net royalty acres during the year and acquired at least 20,000, throughout the entire year. Speaker 200:13:10That's because those are the highest rate of return opportunities. And, when we talk about IRRs around here because that is our North Star in terms of what guides us on all of our investment positions, It's hard for people on the outside of the company to wrap their heads around it because they don't have all the data we have. So perhaps it helps to share some more information around where that shows up in the company. So it manifests itself in a couple of ways. One is when you look at the high cash flow yield on the deals we did this year, as I mentioned in the call, cash flow yield over 25% on a next twelve month basis for the deals we did in 2025. Speaker 200:13:48The other point that shows up is in production per debt adjusted share. Since the time we've been public just since June of twenty twenty two, our production per debt adjusted share has grown by a compounded annual growth rate of about 20%. So, when we look at the 2024 program, two of the deals we did out Speaker 500:14:13of the Speaker 200:14:1316 were actual auction processes. The remaining 14 were based on the relationships we have. And it's relationships with the mineral owners and then it's supported by relationships we have with the operators who occasionally share some information with us on line of sight activity, which helps underpin our underwriting. So, a great job by the team this year at Vidyo. I'm really proud of what everybody's accomplished here on the acquisition program. Speaker 200:14:39And the more important thing for us looking forward is 2025 was every bit as promising. The opportunity set in front of us is enormous, not just the sort of the art of the possible, but the actual tangible pipeline in front of us is large. So we're working our way through it and we'll continue to allocate capital towards the highest rate of return opportunities. Speaker 400:15:01And then just a second, just most operators now have plans out. I'm just wondering what does activity look like for remainder of the year versus what you all were expecting? Thanks. Speaker 200:15:12I'm sorry, I had trouble hearing the question, Neil. Speaker 400:15:16I'm just wondering, most operators have their plans out. And I'm just wondering, Chris, based on sort of expectations, whether it's in Perm, DJ, you name it, where your minerals are, is activity about as you were expecting sort of start up the year and with the way that it looks for the remainder of the year? Speaker 200:15:35Good question. Yes. So we've been watching our operator announcements closely and that does inform how we look at our guidance for 2025. The good news is the bulk of our guidance, almost all of it is underpinned by the spud and permit. So activity that's already commenced by the operators. Speaker 200:15:54So we don't have Speaker 600:15:55to believe a lot about what Speaker 200:15:58they're going to do with remaining inventory on our footprint. So in most of the cases, they've already spent some capital dollars to initiate some kind of activity on our minerals. So the guidance you see from us, which shows about a 3% growth year over year at the midpoint of our guidance, is informed by not only the operator comments they're making, but also by the actions they're taking on flooding new wells and permitting new wells. As you think about how it relates to our acquisition program, we don't guide or include in our guidance any contribution from acquisitions. So anything we do with our acquisition program in 2025 will be over and above that organic growth rate. Speaker 200:16:42Hope that addresses your question, Neil. Speaker 700:16:46Thank you. Operator00:16:54Thank you. Our next question is from Derek Whitfield from Texas Capital. Your line is now open. Please go Speaker 600:17:02ahead. Thanks and good morning all and congrats on a strong year end closing update. Thanks, Derek. For my first question, I wanted to build on Neil's question on guidance. As outlined, your 2025 guidance implies maintenance level activity versus Q4, while your line of sight activity implies growth. Speaker 600:17:25How would you frame your production trajectory? And were there any outsized contributions from missing revenue or M and A that led to a stronger than expected Q4? Speaker 200:17:38Yes. Thanks. So, the missing revenue effort we have is really to collect payments that we are already owed and we already show in our revenue line. So that doesn't result in incremental revenue, but it doesn't result in incremental cash recovered that we are owed and oftentimes requires an extraordinary effort to recover. When we think about the 2025 production, we do see contribution from primarily the Permian, some from the DJ Basin as well. Speaker 200:18:14A lot of the activity we've done in recent years in the DJ Basin has been skewed more towards line of sight development. So when we think about longer term and more duration, it really is the Permian is where the activity will largely come from. And as we look at our footprint there, if you just exclude New Mexico, we have a lighter footprint. Dax has some statistics that we can share with you on our percentage coverage. We talk about the entire Permian Basin. Speaker 200:18:43We cover about 36% of the entire Permian Basin. But then when you narrow it down to where our asset concentration is within that, that can cover some statistics for us. Speaker 500:18:55Yes. So we have at least for our acreage, USU acreage more, percentage in the Texas part of the Delaware Basin up to around 56%, and around 16% in New Mexico, and it's with total basin coverage around 36%. Speaker 600:19:17Terrific. And then maybe leaning in on your commentary on the robust deal flow for 2025. Your M and A focus in recent quarters has been, as you noted, on the Permian and DJ. First, kind of part of this question is, does the more constructive natural gas backdrop change the size of the opportunity set where your teams are focused? And then more broadly, in thinking about the value of your differentiated AI driven asset management system, Does that system change how you think about buying diversified packages where the market opportunity could be greater for the machine you've built? Speaker 200:19:54Yes. Thanks. So I think the market opportunity for the investments we've made in people and systems really lends itself to scale. I don't think any particular advantage for greater geographic diversification, it really is just an advantage of scale. So the investments we've made will pay off significantly as we continue to scale this business. Speaker 200:20:13It's really remarkable how we can just layer in more 1s and 0s into our system that we've built that's almost infinitely scalable. When I think about the natural gas backed up, I got this question over e mail from a shareholder as well. It's pretty favorable when you look at the gas macro. So global gas demand and then you have domestic gas demand from increased power generation needs for the electrification of everything And then, the obvious buzzword lately is data centers, and that's not a near term, that's probably several years away, but it's a great macro tailwind, for perpetual assets like ours. So we look at our portfolio, we don't look at ourselves as light on natural gas because we do have quite a bit of natural gas exposure in the Permian and to a lesser extent in the DJ Basin just given the relative size of those footprints. Speaker 200:21:13Jared has some statistics that you might find interesting on the trends in natural gas in the Permian that not a lot of people are talking about, but it's a reality. So I'll turn it over to Jared. Speaker 500:21:26Yes, Derek. One thing that we've been looking at recently is trends in percent oil across the Permian over time. So, we run these numbers internally and you also can find them at the short term NGLs look at the EIA. If you go back to around 2021, the Permian was around 63% oil and today it's around 60% oil. So, you're seeing nearly 1% year a year of oil percentage dropping in the Permian and it's more pronounced in the Midland Basin. Speaker 500:21:57So that's something that we're looking at that not a lot of people are seeing. And, with us having around half of our revenue from the Delaware Basin which has less of this effect compared to the Midland. That's good for us but we obviously have exposure to the Midland Basin. So we're looking at that not only from an asset management perspective but also how we think about our guidance. So that's why this year you'll see a little bit less of oil percentage for the year and that's underpinned by the line of sight wells, as well as what we're seeing on the PDP base that we already have. Speaker 500:22:32And I think your other question you mentioned, I'll just kind of jump in here on the, on AI and how it Speaker 600:22:37affects Speaker 500:22:37acquisitions. Our acquisition underwriting is not explicitly exposed to the tools that we build that could utilize AI. But the great news about that is and probably one of the funnest parts of our business is once we acquire something, we're able to go back and recover revenue and and barrels and dollars that the previous owners who were not actively managing it missed. So the asset management tools that we have are a really great way to, improve the management of the acquisitions that we bring in house. So that's something that for every single acquisition that we do that we enjoy working on. Speaker 500:23:16And Derek, Speaker 200:23:16one other comment I'll make just on the natural gas pricing part of your question. We're really encouraged to see the midstream companies really staying ahead of the propensity for the Permian to see wider basis differentials. So we're thrilled to see Blackcomb and Warrior projects underway and expect to see more announcements like that as these trends that Jared just walked through continue to manifest themselves into reality. Speaker 600:23:49That's helpful. Thanks for your time. Operator00:23:54Thank you. Our next question is from Jared Gareau from Stephens. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Speaker 800:24:02Hey, good morning guys and thanks for taking my question. My first one is another one in regards to natural gas. Some of the Appalachia Operators have provided guidance for increased gas production in the basin, whether it be this year or over the next few years. Can you provide any color as if you looked at the mineral deals in Appalachia? Or would you see the deal flow in that basin? Speaker 800:24:25Thanks. Speaker 200:24:27Yes. Thanks for the question. We used to own some assets in Appalachia. The particular assets that we owned were relatively mature compared to the rest of our portfolio, and we had a pretty unique opportunity to make a hybrid return acquisition. So again, in our position as capital allocators, we decided to part with those assets and use those proceeds to fund the DJ Basin acquisition we did. Speaker 200:24:52They closed on April four of twenty twenty four. So we've been in Appalachia before. We think the world of the region as a geologic province, we're very, very fortunate as a country to have that resource and, it's an enormous resource in place. There's very healthy operators in the region. As a mineral owner, there's a unique set of challenges for owning minerals in Appalachia. Speaker 200:25:20And a lot of it centers around the land situation. I can turn the call over to Britton James from our VP of Land to describe some of those. Yes. Thanks, Chris. John, we have in the land side and trying to guide and share information publicly is that oftentimes the way that operators can space and put their drilling plans in place make it challenging for us to see what is going to happen in future development. Speaker 800:25:53Perfect. Thank you for the color. And then my second one is, could you give us some thoughts on strategic priorities for free cash flow allocation 2025, particularly regarding debt reduction, dividends, buybacks and investments in growth opportunities? Thank you. Speaker 200:26:11Sure. Yes, the first and foremost priority is returning capital to our shareholders. This is a really powerful business model that's capable of returning a lot of capital to shareholders. In fact, we've returned over $840,000,000 to shareholders through dividends and buybacks just in the short time we've been managing this company. And I would expect this year with the commodity price environment we're in today for that number to exceed $1,000,000,000 So, so far, we've returned approximately 30% of our market cap to our shareholders in a very short period of time. Speaker 200:26:42So it's a really powerful business model to be able to return that much capital to shareholders. That said, there's also a very remarkable opportunity to reinvest. As I mentioned, these acquisition opportunities that are in front of us present really compelling rate of return opportunities for reinvestment. So we do look to use the retained capital for two purposes. One is to reinvest in high rate of return of free of acquisitions and then also maintaining our very strong balance sheet. Speaker 200:27:12It's important to note that our cost of capital turned out to be an advantage for us. And as we look at I look at the bond market and the investors there are speaking with the price action. You look at the yield on our existing bonds and it's close to 6%. And that's a really compelling cost of capital relative to where we were not too long ago when our existing notes back in 2022 yielded in excess of 10%. So remarkable improvement in our cost of capital. Speaker 200:27:51We have a tremendous amount of liquidity over $400,000,000 of liquidity. Our cash interest expense per BOE is down 17% year over year. So the maintenance of a really strong balance sheet is very important for us and reinvesting in high rate of return acquisitions is also important. Speaker 800:28:12Thanks for taking my questions. Speaker 200:28:15Thank you. Operator00:28:17Thank you. Our next question is from Tim Rezman from KeyBanc. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Speaker 700:28:32Good morning folks and thanks for taking my questions. First one was a housekeeping one. I was curious if you could provide some color behind the cash G and A increase. It looks like it's up about 25% year over year. I don't know if that's just Alisa doing a good job with contract negotiations or if there's something more there. Speaker 700:28:51Any color would be helpful. Thanks. Speaker 200:28:55Thanks, Jim. Appreciate the question, so does Alyssa. Now, I think you're seeing a couple of things. One is we've made the investments in people and systems that will allow us to scale a lot larger than where we are right now. The percentage that you mentioned obviously is a large percentage, but when we look at the absolute dollar increase year over year, you're talking about a $6,000,000 or $7,000,000 increase on $4,000,000,000 enterprise. Speaker 200:29:21So I think you're talking about the law of small numbers. Another interesting factoid is that our cash G and A for the entire year is effectively paid for by the first three weeks of royalty revenue for the year. So, it's a remarkably scalable business from a G and A standpoint and with the investments we've made, we're very optimistic about the future. Speaker 700:29:45Okay. Okay. That makes sense. As my follow-up, you've been pretty successful playing small ball with the non marketed deals. And what's been interesting is you've had a willingness to go into kind of the DJ Basin recognizing the strong economics there when you have permitted wells. Speaker 700:30:04There's a large operator. There's been discussions about a potential mineral sale in that area with Shatter around $1,000,000,000 So, Speaker 200:30:14can Speaker 700:30:14you provide any comments on that news or your willingness to go that big for the right deal? Speaker 200:30:22Yes. I think it's less about how big the deal is and how more about how big the returns are. So, risk adjusted returns have to compensate us for, outlaying the capital. So we look at large acquisitions all the time in our existing basins and other basins, but the risk adjusted returns have just been better on the deals we've executed on. So that's how we've done it. Speaker 200:30:45The small deals that we've done in the DGA Basin in particular have been heavily skewed towards, existing production and flood wells and then permits that are within the caps that have been approved. So it's, from our standpoint, a proper risk adjusted return. And then the Permian program looks a lot like what you've seen from us in prior years with a good balance of existing production, wide of site wells and years and years of remaining inventory, a lot more duration than we see anywhere else. Speaker 700:31:21Okay. Thanks. And if I could just sneak a follow-up and just to kind of, close the loop on the acquisitions in the fourth quarter, your oil SKU went down a bit. Can you just it seemed like that was from those acquisitions. Is that what's driving that lower oil SKU? Speaker 700:31:38You talked about the maturation of the Midland, but is that acquisition kind of the big driver of that? Speaker 200:31:46Yes. That was definitely a component of it. But I think the important thing to note is that even without the acquisitions, we would have been right around the midpoint of the guidance on oil. So, it's not like the oil volumes aren't coming through without acquisitions. We're exceeding on oil for the full year from our guidance, but we're exceeding by a wider margin on the natural gas for the dynamics that are walked through. Speaker 700:32:18Okay. Thanks for the comments. Speaker 200:32:22Thanks, Tim. Operator00:32:24Thank you. Our next question is from Noel Parks from Talley Brothers Investment. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Speaker 900:32:36Hi, good morning. Just a couple. I apologize, you touched on this already. But with the deal environment, if we did have ahead of us a period of sustained higher prices, either for oil or gas. Say capital discipline persists and demand is good on the macro level and we wind up sort of steadily at the higher end of recent trading ranges. Speaker 900:33:06Is that helpful or more hurtful as far as bid ask and getting people to agreement on deals? Speaker 200:33:18It's a really good question because we've looked at this phenomenon of the interplay between commodity price environment or movement and acquisition activity and sort of the gap between the data and the ask on acquisition. What we found is the least constructive environment for us is a rapidly declining price environment. That's where we find that sellers tend to hold on to price expectations from just recent history. Stable prices are adequate for us to transact in and rising price environments are adequate as well. So I'd say the only one unfavorable is a rapidly declining price environment. Speaker 200:33:58But, as you mentioned, for what we've seen for quite a period now, it's been a healthy, stable environment, maybe trending upward on natural gas more than oil, but supportive for M and A activity. Speaker 900:34:14Great. Thanks. And again, something that we see more on the gas side, it's been such a good environment seasonally this year for Natgas. And as we look at those the gassy operators reporting year over year numbers, it looks like much better comps compared to the tough winter last year. So, we definitely have seen also alongside capital discipline, this greater willingness to use curtailments as a way to address volatility, especially downward volatility building ducks and so forth. Speaker 900:34:59And do you sort of see just your diversification by basin and by operator being the best defense against even increased lumpiness when operators react to what they see in the price environment as it shifts? Speaker 200:35:19Yes. We view the diversification as a strength for a lot of reasons. But if you just look at our revenue for 2024, about 84% of it was oil. So with operators with that economic signal, there's almost not a gas price at which they would shut in their oily wells. So we're really not exposed to the types of geographic regions where operators would shut in production because of just the gas prices. Speaker 200:35:52Clearly, we would like gas prices to be stable and healthy for operators to produce, but we're really not exposed to that kind of environment. Speaker 900:36:06Great. Thanks a lot. Speaker 700:36:10Thank you. Operator00:36:12Thank you. This concludes our Q and A session and consequently today's call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.Read moreRemove AdsPowered by Conference Call Audio Live Call not available Earnings Conference CallSitio Royalties Q4 202400:00 / 00:00Speed:1x1.25x1.5x2xRemove Ads Earnings DocumentsSlide DeckPress Release(8-K) Sitio Royalties Earnings HeadlinesBarclays Sticks to Its Sell Rating for Sitio Royalties (STR)April 5, 2025 | markets.businessinsider.comSitio Royalties price target lowered to $27 from $28 at StephensApril 4, 2025 | markets.businessinsider.comNow that Trump’s be inaugurated, this day will be key (mark your calendar)Mark your calendar for May 7th. Because on that day, I believe we could see a $2 Trillion shock INTO the market… Unleashing more explosive moves than ever before.April 10, 2025 | Timothy Sykes (Ad)Sitio Royalties initiated with a Neutral at MizuhoApril 1, 2025 | markets.businessinsider.comIs Sitio Royalties Corp. (STR) the Best Stock to Buy According to Howard Marks’ Oaktree Capital Management?March 31, 2025 | insidermonkey.comMizuho Initiates Coverage of Sitio Royalties (STR) with Neutral RecommendationMarch 31, 2025 | msn.comSee More Sitio Royalties Headlines Get Earnings Announcements in your inboxWant to stay updated on the latest earnings announcements and upcoming reports for companies like Sitio Royalties? Sign up for Earnings360's daily newsletter to receive timely earnings updates on Sitio Royalties and other key companies, straight to your email. Email Address About Sitio RoyaltiesSitio Royalties (NYSE:STR) operates as oil and gas mineral and royalty company. The company acquires oil-weighted rights in productive and the United States basins. It has approximately 140,000 net royalty acres through the consummation of over 180 acquisitions. 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There are 10 speakers on the call. Operator00:00:00Hello and welcome everyone to the City of Realty's Fourth Quarter twenty twenty four Earnings Call. My name is Becky and I'll be your operator today. During the presentation, you can register a question by pressing star followed by one on your keypad. I will now hand over to your host, Alyssa Stephens, Vice President of Investor Relations to begin. Please go ahead. Speaker 100:00:25Thanks, operator. Good morning, and welcome to our fourth quarter and full year '20 '20 '4 conference call. By now, it is our hope that you have been through our materials. You can find our recent news release and some supplemental slides on our website under the Investor Relations section. I'm joined this morning by our CEO, Chris Conasenti and our CFO, Cary Oseka. Speaker 100:00:45After our brief prepared remarks, Chris, Cary and other members of our leadership team will be available to take your questions. Before we start, I would like to remind you that our discussion today may contain forward looking statements and non GAAP measures. Please refer to our earnings release, investor presentation and publicly filed documents for additional information regarding such forward looking statements and non GAAP measures. I will now turn the call over to Chris. Speaker 200:01:11Thanks, Elisa, and welcome, everyone. I want to publicly welcome Elisa Stevens to the Scitio team. She joined us early this year as our new VP of Investor Relations. Many of you may have met her already, but she is a great addition to Scitio. This has allowed Ross Wong to take on additional leadership responsibilities on our finance team. Speaker 200:01:30So let's get started. We will divide today's call into three segments. First, I will review our 2024 highlights and how we strengthened the business through accretive acquisitions and active management of our minerals. Second, Gary will summarize our recent financial results and our 2025 outlook. Lastly, we will review our key priorities for the year. Speaker 200:01:522024 was a strong year of execution for Scitio and we have a solid list of accomplishments. I'll hit the highlights. First, we delivered against our full year projections. We had record fourth quarter production of about 41,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, a 14% year over year increase and averaged over 39,000 barrels of oil equivalent for the year pro form a for the DJ Basin acquisition. We exceeded the high end of full year guidance even after raising guidance twice during the year. Speaker 200:02:22Our expenses and taxes fell within or slightly below our guidance range. Our solid results were due to the exceptional work of the entire team at Scitio, the quality of our land positions in the most prolific U. S. Basins, strong activity and well performance from our industry leading operators, accretive acquisitions and our differentiated asset management capabilities. Second, we continue to develop innovative efficiencies. Speaker 200:02:47This is one of our core competencies that differentiates us from our peers. Throughout 2024, we refined our proprietary custom built asset management applications, which allow us to process and analyze significantly more data per person. We can now automatically process more than 99% of the revenue check data we receive from our operators, reducing approximately 21,000,000 rows of data down to 100,000 records for our staff to review annually. Taking this a step further, we use AI models to interpret contracts that enable us to identify revenue payment discrepancies, producing a dashboard for further analysis by our team. In 2024, we captured $19,000,000 of missing revenue payments, offsetting over two thirds of our cash G and A. Speaker 200:03:34We have invested in our future both in terms of highly skilled people across the company and new technologies. Our relatively small investments in asset management systems will be returned many times over and we expect meaningful reductions in cash G and A costs per BOE as we continue to scale our minerals position. Next, we closed 16 high value acquisitions throughout the year. These were immediately accretive to discretionary cash flow per share and represented some of the highest return investments in our history. It was a standout year for consolidation of high return small and medium sized deals. Speaker 200:04:09FITIO has demonstrated its ability to negotiate deals outside of normal broad auction processes. Our practices are repeatable and the deals we've executed are impactful in the aggregate. It was a healthy year of deal flow for us with acquisitions totaling more than $350,000,000 including fourth quarter deals of approximately $140,000,000 The fourth quarter deals added 3,300 net royalty acres to our portfolio, primarily in the Delaware Basin. Number four, we are committed to a strong balance sheet and our capital structure is solid. In December, our borrowing base was increased to $925,000,000 an increase of $75,000,000 Year over year, our annual interest expense on a per BOE basis was down over 17% as we refinanced higher cost notes in late twenty twenty three. Speaker 200:05:02Our balanced capital structure, high quality assets and robust coverage ratios helped ensure financial flexibility, ample liquidity and access to future capital at attractive rates. Our senior notes continue to trade well above par, and we are one of two minerals companies currently accessing the public debt markets, which advantages our cost of capital. Lastly, we prioritize capital returns to shareholders and deliver value on a per share basis. In 2024, we returned $330,000,000 to owners, or over 70% of our discretionary cash flow. Since becoming public in mid-twenty twenty two, our cumulative return of capital to shareholders is nearly $850,000,000 including dividends and share buybacks. Speaker 200:05:46This represents nearly 30% of our current market capitalization. At current commodity prices, we expect that number to exceed $1,000,000,000 in 2025. This was a great year for us. We had a winning combination of execution, efficiency gains and acquisition activity that allowed us to maintain our strong balance sheet and return capital to shareholders. Importantly, our results underscore the repeatability of our business model. Speaker 200:06:12With that, I'll turn it over to Carrie to summarize our recent financial results and 2025 outlook. Speaker 300:06:18Thanks, Chris. For the fourth quarter, our results beat consensus estimates for production, adjusted EBITDA and discretionary cash flow. Adjusted EBITDA was $141,200,000 which was 4% higher than the prior quarter and reflected strong production and lower than expected cash G and A. Production was up 6% quarter over quarter, averaging nearly 41,000 BOE per day. We had a 9% increase in net turned in line wells in the quarter, which was driven by increased operator drilling and completion activity. Speaker 300:06:52We closed on approximately $140,000,000 of acquisitions late in the quarter. We are committed to returning capital to shareholders through cash dividends and opportunistic share repurchases. Our board declared a fourth quarter cash dividend of $0.41 per share. Payable on March 28 and during the fourth quarter, we repurchased 643,000 shares for $12,900,000 equating to $0.08 per share in repurchases. Importantly, this represents a total return of capital of $0.49 per share. Speaker 300:07:25At year end, we had about $80,000,000 remaining under our $200,000,000 repurchase authorization. Turning now to the balance sheet, we had $1,100,000,000 of debt outstanding with $437,200,000 of availability under our revolving credit facility at year end 2024. Our borrowing base was increased by $75,000,000 to $925,000,000 And despite our $140,000,000 of cash acquisitions in the fourth quarter, liquidity only decreased by $15,000,000 As we look to 2025, we expect activity levels to remain consistent with last year and have good visibility via 45 net line of sight wells and commentary from operators and their activity levels. We expect our oil production at the midpoint will be 18,500 barrels per day and total production will be just under 40,000 BOE per day at the midpoint. This represents a 3% increase over reported full year 2024 production. Speaker 300:08:28As a reminder, we do not forecast acquisitions or published guidance. However, history shows that we consistently create value through blocking and tackling with high return acquisitions and our pipeline remains strong. Please reference our materials for additional details. I'll hand it back to Chris. Speaker 200:08:46Thanks, Carrie. Before taking your questions, let me quickly discuss how we define and measure success at CITIO. Number one on the list is healthy deal flow. We have a proven team with relationships and technical experience across all the major U. S. Speaker 200:09:00Basins. We maintain strong relationships with large mineral owners and smaller mineral aggregators. Today, we continue to see consistent field flow and attractive opportunities that meet our criteria for risk adjusted returns. The continued market interest in M and A activity in the mineral space is increasingly drawing the attention of long term mineral owners, some who have held their minerals for more than twenty years and now appear more open to selling. Many have been holding for yield, but are recognizing that basin maturity along with development activity levels suggest favorable timing for a sale. Speaker 200:09:34We are very selective and the deals we consider must clear a high bar. In 2024, we evaluated more than 160 transactions and ultimately executed it on just 10% of those. From a net royalty acre standpoint, we acquired just 4% of what we screened. As a result, our 2024 deals had a weighted average unlevered IRR of more than 15% and next twelve month cash flow yield exceeding 25%, well above our underwrite thresholds. We will remain disciplined in our underwriting assumptions and will continue to look for the right deals to create value. Speaker 200:10:11Second is growth per share. We are focused on adding value on a per share basis. Our fourth quarter production was up 14% year over year, while our share count dropped 3%. Since becoming public, we have increased production per debt adjusted share by more than 50%, representing a 20% compound annual growth rate. We will continue to use free cash flow to maintain our balance sheet and return meaningful cash to shareholders. Speaker 200:10:39Third on the list is efficiency as measured by cash G and A per BOE, EBITDA margins and capturing missing revenue. We are in the early innings of realizing the full potential of our proprietary automation tools and applications that underpin our asset management system. Automation increases the value add of our professionals and maximizes the value of our assets. With this platform in place, we're positioned to seamlessly tack on additional assets, supporting our margins and cost effective growth in the future. Over the last three years, we have been very selective in how we have grown our business. Speaker 200:11:13Today, we have scale that can be leveraged to the advantage of our owners. Recent investments in people and new technologies will create sustainable efficiencies in the years ahead. In closing, Scitio is in a strong and advantaged position today in the minerals industry. Consolidation will continue and minerals assets will continue to migrate to bigger and more efficient companies like us. We will continue to employ our proprietary practices to prudently manage our assets, maintain financial strength and create long term value for our shareholders. Speaker 200:11:43Operator, we are now ready to take questions. Operator00:12:04Our first question is from Neil Dingmann with Taurus Securities. Neil, your line is now open. Please go ahead. Speaker 400:12:13Good morning guys. My first question just, could you talk about your various marketed deals and just wondering how those compare? There's been a lot of market deals out there, how that compares to the crisp number of deals that you all were able to complete? Speaker 200:12:26Hi, good morning, Neil. It's great to hear from you. Just a couple of comments on the M and A environment. You noted the deals we evaluated and the deals we did, so it was a robust year from a deal flow standpoint. The important thing Speaker 500:12:42to highlight really is the consistency Speaker 200:12:43of how we're delivering on the acquisition program. So you look at just the last couple of years quarter in quarter out, we continue to make these small and medium sized acquisitions. Our capital and our job here really is to allocate this capital most efficiently. Our capital is flowing to the highest rate of return opportunity. So as you can tell by the statistics that we mentioned in the call, we've looked at hundreds of thousands of net royalty acres during the year and acquired at least 20,000, throughout the entire year. Speaker 200:13:10That's because those are the highest rate of return opportunities. And, when we talk about IRRs around here because that is our North Star in terms of what guides us on all of our investment positions, It's hard for people on the outside of the company to wrap their heads around it because they don't have all the data we have. So perhaps it helps to share some more information around where that shows up in the company. So it manifests itself in a couple of ways. One is when you look at the high cash flow yield on the deals we did this year, as I mentioned in the call, cash flow yield over 25% on a next twelve month basis for the deals we did in 2025. Speaker 200:13:48The other point that shows up is in production per debt adjusted share. Since the time we've been public just since June of twenty twenty two, our production per debt adjusted share has grown by a compounded annual growth rate of about 20%. So, when we look at the 2024 program, two of the deals we did out Speaker 500:14:13of the Speaker 200:14:1316 were actual auction processes. The remaining 14 were based on the relationships we have. And it's relationships with the mineral owners and then it's supported by relationships we have with the operators who occasionally share some information with us on line of sight activity, which helps underpin our underwriting. So, a great job by the team this year at Vidyo. I'm really proud of what everybody's accomplished here on the acquisition program. Speaker 200:14:39And the more important thing for us looking forward is 2025 was every bit as promising. The opportunity set in front of us is enormous, not just the sort of the art of the possible, but the actual tangible pipeline in front of us is large. So we're working our way through it and we'll continue to allocate capital towards the highest rate of return opportunities. Speaker 400:15:01And then just a second, just most operators now have plans out. I'm just wondering what does activity look like for remainder of the year versus what you all were expecting? Thanks. Speaker 200:15:12I'm sorry, I had trouble hearing the question, Neil. Speaker 400:15:16I'm just wondering, most operators have their plans out. And I'm just wondering, Chris, based on sort of expectations, whether it's in Perm, DJ, you name it, where your minerals are, is activity about as you were expecting sort of start up the year and with the way that it looks for the remainder of the year? Speaker 200:15:35Good question. Yes. So we've been watching our operator announcements closely and that does inform how we look at our guidance for 2025. The good news is the bulk of our guidance, almost all of it is underpinned by the spud and permit. So activity that's already commenced by the operators. Speaker 200:15:54So we don't have Speaker 600:15:55to believe a lot about what Speaker 200:15:58they're going to do with remaining inventory on our footprint. So in most of the cases, they've already spent some capital dollars to initiate some kind of activity on our minerals. So the guidance you see from us, which shows about a 3% growth year over year at the midpoint of our guidance, is informed by not only the operator comments they're making, but also by the actions they're taking on flooding new wells and permitting new wells. As you think about how it relates to our acquisition program, we don't guide or include in our guidance any contribution from acquisitions. So anything we do with our acquisition program in 2025 will be over and above that organic growth rate. Speaker 200:16:42Hope that addresses your question, Neil. Speaker 700:16:46Thank you. Operator00:16:54Thank you. Our next question is from Derek Whitfield from Texas Capital. Your line is now open. Please go Speaker 600:17:02ahead. Thanks and good morning all and congrats on a strong year end closing update. Thanks, Derek. For my first question, I wanted to build on Neil's question on guidance. As outlined, your 2025 guidance implies maintenance level activity versus Q4, while your line of sight activity implies growth. Speaker 600:17:25How would you frame your production trajectory? And were there any outsized contributions from missing revenue or M and A that led to a stronger than expected Q4? Speaker 200:17:38Yes. Thanks. So, the missing revenue effort we have is really to collect payments that we are already owed and we already show in our revenue line. So that doesn't result in incremental revenue, but it doesn't result in incremental cash recovered that we are owed and oftentimes requires an extraordinary effort to recover. When we think about the 2025 production, we do see contribution from primarily the Permian, some from the DJ Basin as well. Speaker 200:18:14A lot of the activity we've done in recent years in the DJ Basin has been skewed more towards line of sight development. So when we think about longer term and more duration, it really is the Permian is where the activity will largely come from. And as we look at our footprint there, if you just exclude New Mexico, we have a lighter footprint. Dax has some statistics that we can share with you on our percentage coverage. We talk about the entire Permian Basin. Speaker 200:18:43We cover about 36% of the entire Permian Basin. But then when you narrow it down to where our asset concentration is within that, that can cover some statistics for us. Speaker 500:18:55Yes. So we have at least for our acreage, USU acreage more, percentage in the Texas part of the Delaware Basin up to around 56%, and around 16% in New Mexico, and it's with total basin coverage around 36%. Speaker 600:19:17Terrific. And then maybe leaning in on your commentary on the robust deal flow for 2025. Your M and A focus in recent quarters has been, as you noted, on the Permian and DJ. First, kind of part of this question is, does the more constructive natural gas backdrop change the size of the opportunity set where your teams are focused? And then more broadly, in thinking about the value of your differentiated AI driven asset management system, Does that system change how you think about buying diversified packages where the market opportunity could be greater for the machine you've built? Speaker 200:19:54Yes. Thanks. So I think the market opportunity for the investments we've made in people and systems really lends itself to scale. I don't think any particular advantage for greater geographic diversification, it really is just an advantage of scale. So the investments we've made will pay off significantly as we continue to scale this business. Speaker 200:20:13It's really remarkable how we can just layer in more 1s and 0s into our system that we've built that's almost infinitely scalable. When I think about the natural gas backed up, I got this question over e mail from a shareholder as well. It's pretty favorable when you look at the gas macro. So global gas demand and then you have domestic gas demand from increased power generation needs for the electrification of everything And then, the obvious buzzword lately is data centers, and that's not a near term, that's probably several years away, but it's a great macro tailwind, for perpetual assets like ours. So we look at our portfolio, we don't look at ourselves as light on natural gas because we do have quite a bit of natural gas exposure in the Permian and to a lesser extent in the DJ Basin just given the relative size of those footprints. Speaker 200:21:13Jared has some statistics that you might find interesting on the trends in natural gas in the Permian that not a lot of people are talking about, but it's a reality. So I'll turn it over to Jared. Speaker 500:21:26Yes, Derek. One thing that we've been looking at recently is trends in percent oil across the Permian over time. So, we run these numbers internally and you also can find them at the short term NGLs look at the EIA. If you go back to around 2021, the Permian was around 63% oil and today it's around 60% oil. So, you're seeing nearly 1% year a year of oil percentage dropping in the Permian and it's more pronounced in the Midland Basin. Speaker 500:21:57So that's something that we're looking at that not a lot of people are seeing. And, with us having around half of our revenue from the Delaware Basin which has less of this effect compared to the Midland. That's good for us but we obviously have exposure to the Midland Basin. So we're looking at that not only from an asset management perspective but also how we think about our guidance. So that's why this year you'll see a little bit less of oil percentage for the year and that's underpinned by the line of sight wells, as well as what we're seeing on the PDP base that we already have. Speaker 500:22:32And I think your other question you mentioned, I'll just kind of jump in here on the, on AI and how it Speaker 600:22:37affects Speaker 500:22:37acquisitions. Our acquisition underwriting is not explicitly exposed to the tools that we build that could utilize AI. But the great news about that is and probably one of the funnest parts of our business is once we acquire something, we're able to go back and recover revenue and and barrels and dollars that the previous owners who were not actively managing it missed. So the asset management tools that we have are a really great way to, improve the management of the acquisitions that we bring in house. So that's something that for every single acquisition that we do that we enjoy working on. Speaker 500:23:16And Derek, Speaker 200:23:16one other comment I'll make just on the natural gas pricing part of your question. We're really encouraged to see the midstream companies really staying ahead of the propensity for the Permian to see wider basis differentials. So we're thrilled to see Blackcomb and Warrior projects underway and expect to see more announcements like that as these trends that Jared just walked through continue to manifest themselves into reality. Speaker 600:23:49That's helpful. Thanks for your time. Operator00:23:54Thank you. Our next question is from Jared Gareau from Stephens. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Speaker 800:24:02Hey, good morning guys and thanks for taking my question. My first one is another one in regards to natural gas. Some of the Appalachia Operators have provided guidance for increased gas production in the basin, whether it be this year or over the next few years. Can you provide any color as if you looked at the mineral deals in Appalachia? Or would you see the deal flow in that basin? Speaker 800:24:25Thanks. Speaker 200:24:27Yes. Thanks for the question. We used to own some assets in Appalachia. The particular assets that we owned were relatively mature compared to the rest of our portfolio, and we had a pretty unique opportunity to make a hybrid return acquisition. So again, in our position as capital allocators, we decided to part with those assets and use those proceeds to fund the DJ Basin acquisition we did. Speaker 200:24:52They closed on April four of twenty twenty four. So we've been in Appalachia before. We think the world of the region as a geologic province, we're very, very fortunate as a country to have that resource and, it's an enormous resource in place. There's very healthy operators in the region. As a mineral owner, there's a unique set of challenges for owning minerals in Appalachia. Speaker 200:25:20And a lot of it centers around the land situation. I can turn the call over to Britton James from our VP of Land to describe some of those. Yes. Thanks, Chris. John, we have in the land side and trying to guide and share information publicly is that oftentimes the way that operators can space and put their drilling plans in place make it challenging for us to see what is going to happen in future development. Speaker 800:25:53Perfect. Thank you for the color. And then my second one is, could you give us some thoughts on strategic priorities for free cash flow allocation 2025, particularly regarding debt reduction, dividends, buybacks and investments in growth opportunities? Thank you. Speaker 200:26:11Sure. Yes, the first and foremost priority is returning capital to our shareholders. This is a really powerful business model that's capable of returning a lot of capital to shareholders. In fact, we've returned over $840,000,000 to shareholders through dividends and buybacks just in the short time we've been managing this company. And I would expect this year with the commodity price environment we're in today for that number to exceed $1,000,000,000 So, so far, we've returned approximately 30% of our market cap to our shareholders in a very short period of time. Speaker 200:26:42So it's a really powerful business model to be able to return that much capital to shareholders. That said, there's also a very remarkable opportunity to reinvest. As I mentioned, these acquisition opportunities that are in front of us present really compelling rate of return opportunities for reinvestment. So we do look to use the retained capital for two purposes. One is to reinvest in high rate of return of free of acquisitions and then also maintaining our very strong balance sheet. Speaker 200:27:12It's important to note that our cost of capital turned out to be an advantage for us. And as we look at I look at the bond market and the investors there are speaking with the price action. You look at the yield on our existing bonds and it's close to 6%. And that's a really compelling cost of capital relative to where we were not too long ago when our existing notes back in 2022 yielded in excess of 10%. So remarkable improvement in our cost of capital. Speaker 200:27:51We have a tremendous amount of liquidity over $400,000,000 of liquidity. Our cash interest expense per BOE is down 17% year over year. So the maintenance of a really strong balance sheet is very important for us and reinvesting in high rate of return acquisitions is also important. Speaker 800:28:12Thanks for taking my questions. Speaker 200:28:15Thank you. Operator00:28:17Thank you. Our next question is from Tim Rezman from KeyBanc. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Speaker 700:28:32Good morning folks and thanks for taking my questions. First one was a housekeeping one. I was curious if you could provide some color behind the cash G and A increase. It looks like it's up about 25% year over year. I don't know if that's just Alisa doing a good job with contract negotiations or if there's something more there. Speaker 700:28:51Any color would be helpful. Thanks. Speaker 200:28:55Thanks, Jim. Appreciate the question, so does Alyssa. Now, I think you're seeing a couple of things. One is we've made the investments in people and systems that will allow us to scale a lot larger than where we are right now. The percentage that you mentioned obviously is a large percentage, but when we look at the absolute dollar increase year over year, you're talking about a $6,000,000 or $7,000,000 increase on $4,000,000,000 enterprise. Speaker 200:29:21So I think you're talking about the law of small numbers. Another interesting factoid is that our cash G and A for the entire year is effectively paid for by the first three weeks of royalty revenue for the year. So, it's a remarkably scalable business from a G and A standpoint and with the investments we've made, we're very optimistic about the future. Speaker 700:29:45Okay. Okay. That makes sense. As my follow-up, you've been pretty successful playing small ball with the non marketed deals. And what's been interesting is you've had a willingness to go into kind of the DJ Basin recognizing the strong economics there when you have permitted wells. Speaker 700:30:04There's a large operator. There's been discussions about a potential mineral sale in that area with Shatter around $1,000,000,000 So, Speaker 200:30:14can Speaker 700:30:14you provide any comments on that news or your willingness to go that big for the right deal? Speaker 200:30:22Yes. I think it's less about how big the deal is and how more about how big the returns are. So, risk adjusted returns have to compensate us for, outlaying the capital. So we look at large acquisitions all the time in our existing basins and other basins, but the risk adjusted returns have just been better on the deals we've executed on. So that's how we've done it. Speaker 200:30:45The small deals that we've done in the DGA Basin in particular have been heavily skewed towards, existing production and flood wells and then permits that are within the caps that have been approved. So it's, from our standpoint, a proper risk adjusted return. And then the Permian program looks a lot like what you've seen from us in prior years with a good balance of existing production, wide of site wells and years and years of remaining inventory, a lot more duration than we see anywhere else. Speaker 700:31:21Okay. Thanks. And if I could just sneak a follow-up and just to kind of, close the loop on the acquisitions in the fourth quarter, your oil SKU went down a bit. Can you just it seemed like that was from those acquisitions. Is that what's driving that lower oil SKU? Speaker 700:31:38You talked about the maturation of the Midland, but is that acquisition kind of the big driver of that? Speaker 200:31:46Yes. That was definitely a component of it. But I think the important thing to note is that even without the acquisitions, we would have been right around the midpoint of the guidance on oil. So, it's not like the oil volumes aren't coming through without acquisitions. We're exceeding on oil for the full year from our guidance, but we're exceeding by a wider margin on the natural gas for the dynamics that are walked through. Speaker 700:32:18Okay. Thanks for the comments. Speaker 200:32:22Thanks, Tim. Operator00:32:24Thank you. Our next question is from Noel Parks from Talley Brothers Investment. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Speaker 900:32:36Hi, good morning. Just a couple. I apologize, you touched on this already. But with the deal environment, if we did have ahead of us a period of sustained higher prices, either for oil or gas. Say capital discipline persists and demand is good on the macro level and we wind up sort of steadily at the higher end of recent trading ranges. Speaker 900:33:06Is that helpful or more hurtful as far as bid ask and getting people to agreement on deals? Speaker 200:33:18It's a really good question because we've looked at this phenomenon of the interplay between commodity price environment or movement and acquisition activity and sort of the gap between the data and the ask on acquisition. What we found is the least constructive environment for us is a rapidly declining price environment. That's where we find that sellers tend to hold on to price expectations from just recent history. Stable prices are adequate for us to transact in and rising price environments are adequate as well. So I'd say the only one unfavorable is a rapidly declining price environment. Speaker 200:33:58But, as you mentioned, for what we've seen for quite a period now, it's been a healthy, stable environment, maybe trending upward on natural gas more than oil, but supportive for M and A activity. Speaker 900:34:14Great. Thanks. And again, something that we see more on the gas side, it's been such a good environment seasonally this year for Natgas. And as we look at those the gassy operators reporting year over year numbers, it looks like much better comps compared to the tough winter last year. So, we definitely have seen also alongside capital discipline, this greater willingness to use curtailments as a way to address volatility, especially downward volatility building ducks and so forth. Speaker 900:34:59And do you sort of see just your diversification by basin and by operator being the best defense against even increased lumpiness when operators react to what they see in the price environment as it shifts? Speaker 200:35:19Yes. We view the diversification as a strength for a lot of reasons. But if you just look at our revenue for 2024, about 84% of it was oil. So with operators with that economic signal, there's almost not a gas price at which they would shut in their oily wells. So we're really not exposed to the types of geographic regions where operators would shut in production because of just the gas prices. Speaker 200:35:52Clearly, we would like gas prices to be stable and healthy for operators to produce, but we're really not exposed to that kind of environment. Speaker 900:36:06Great. Thanks a lot. Speaker 700:36:10Thank you. Operator00:36:12Thank you. This concludes our Q and A session and consequently today's call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.Read moreRemove AdsPowered by