Viper Energy, Inc.

Viper Energy, Inc.

VNOM·NASDAQ

$46.88

+2.8%
EnergyOil & Gas Midstream

Viper Energy Partners LP owns, acquires, and exploits oil and natural gas properties in North America. As of December 31, 2021, it had mineral interests in 27,027 net royalty acres in the Permian Basin and Eagle Ford Shale; and estimated proved oil and natural gas reserves of 127,888 thousand barrels of crude oil equivalent. Viper Energy Partners GP LLC operates as the general partner of the company. The company was founded in 2013 and is based in Midland, Texas. Viper Energy Partners LP is a subsidiary of Diamondback Energy, Inc.

At a Glance

Live Snapshot
Market Cap$16.83B
EPS-0.4800
P/E Ratio-97.67
Earnings Date08/03/2026

Earnings Call Transcript

VNOM • 2023 • Q3

Operator
Good day. And thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Viper Energy Partners Third Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today’s conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to Adam Lawlis, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Adam Lawlis
Thank you, Anton [Ph]. Good morning, and welcome to Viper Energy Partners’ Third Quarter 2023 Conference call. During our call today, we will reference an updated investor presentation, which can be found on Viper’s website. Representing Viper today are Travis Stice, CEO, Kaes Van’t Hof, President; and Austen Gilfillian, General Manager. During this conference call, the participants may make certain forward-looking statements relating to the company’s financial condition, results of operations, plans, objectives, future performance and businesses. We caution you that actual results could differ materially from those that are indicated in these forward-looking statements due to a variety of factors. Information concerning these factors can be found in the company’s filings with the SEC. In addition, we will make reference to certain non-GAAP measures. The reconciliations with the appropriate GAAP measures can be found in our earnings release issued yesterday afternoon. I’ll now turn the call over to Travis Stice.
Travis Stice
Thank you, Adam. Welcome, everyone, and thank you for listening to Viper Energy Partners’ Third Quarter 2023 Conference Call. There were several important updates made yesterday with our earnings announcement, so I will start with our upcoming conversion into a Delaware corporation first. The Board of Directors approved the conversion on November 2 and we expect that it will become effective on November 13. When completed, this conversion will deliver increased corporate governance rights to our limited partners and is intended to position Viper such that the value of our mineral and royalty assets can be fully recognized. Further on that point, we expect the conversion to result in an increase in Viper’s trading liquidity and potential investor universe. Given Viper’s current status as a partnership, we estimate that approximately 2% of our public float is held by index funds. This compares to a select group of our peers averaging around 30% ownership. Fundamentally, we believe this conversion is the right thing to do for our unitholders and that it will provide numerous benefits, but the foundation of the decision is to fully highlight the advantage nature of mineral ownership and the unique value proposition that Viper presents within the space. As a separate recent event, Viper announced last week the closing of our GRP acquisition. This acquisition was a truly unique opportunity and that it checked all the boxes we look for in an acquisition. A medi-accretion to all relevant financial metrics, substantial undeveloped inventory to support long-term returns and significant scale that results in a pro forma business that is both bigger and better. What differentiates this acquisition, however, is both the quantity and quality of the undeveloped inventory, particularly in the Northern Midland Basin. Following the closing of this acquisition, Viper now owns roughly 32,000 net royalty acres in the Permian Basin, and our production will be over 25,000 barrels of oil per day. Looking ahead, we have an unparalleled growth runway of high-quality undeveloped acreage and as the largest player in the public minerals market, we expect to play a meaningful role in consolidating the highly fragmented space as high-value proposition opportunities like GRP present themselves. Turning to the results of the business. The third quarter was another strong quarter for Viper as production grew roughly 5% for the second consecutive quarter. While growth will not always be ratable from quarter-to-quarter, given we own varying interest in what is mostly large-scale development in the Permian Basin. We expect the trend of meaningful growth on an annual basis to continue as evidenced by their preliminary full year 2024 production guidance that we provided. Additionally, during the third quarter, Viper announced an almost $100 million leased bonds which will allow for the future development of deeper zones on certain acreage in the Midland Basin. As mentioned in our rationale for converting into a corporation, there are many structural advantages to mineral ownership beyond just the cost-free royalties, and this significant lease bonus is just one specific example. As owners and lessors of the subsurface property modern lease terms can dictate development requirements of operators. And when those terms are not met, leases can expire and have the full development rights revert back to us as a mineral owner. As deeper zones are tested throughout the basin, we believe this is an advantage that will only be further highlighted in the years to come. As a final point, Viper remains committed to a sustainable and growing return of capital through cash distributions over the long-term. We have the balance sheet strength, durable cash flow profile and undeveloped inventory base to support many years of significant return of capital through the cycle. Activity on our asset base continues to be strong, and we believe we are positioned to execute on opportunistic M&A to further complement what is already a unique value proposition both in terms of return on and return of capital. Operator, please open the line for questions.
Operator
Thank you.[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Neal Dingmann from Truist Securities. Please go ahead.
Austen Gilfillian
Yes. No, the monitoring and enforcing these type of returns is a really important part of what we do now, especially kind of where we are in the industry and in these modern leases and some of the terms that they could have. So this specific lease with Spanish Trail represented about 10% of our total net acres. When we kind of go through and look at the lease -- specific lease provisions that are included across the acreage that we own. We estimate about 50% of our acreage kind of similar lease language that where if the deeper rights haven’t been developed that, that acreage would kind of fall out and will become available. So I don’t think that’s story for tomorrow, but certainly, as things play out over time and the zone becomes more developed and it kind of expands across the basin. I think it’s something that you’ll see more about going forward.
Operator
Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Derrick Whitfield from Stifel. Please go ahead.
Operator
Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Paul Diamond from Citi. Please go ahead.
Operator
One moment for our... Our next question comes from Leo Mariani from ROTH MKM. Please go ahead.
Austen Gilfillian
That’s why the conversion made so much sense is that we became a tactical partnership back in 2018. And in there for a couple of years, Diamondback is effectively shielding us from corporate taxes and that agreement ran out end of last year. So here in 2023, we have a partnership with paying full corporate income taxes and getting all the downside effectively being a corporation, but you don’t have any of the upside. So it just made a lot of sense to do that today given in large part, the kind of tax situation that we’re in.
Leo Mariani
Okay. That’s helpful. And then just wanted to kind of ask on a couple of other sort of numbers here. So I think you guys are kind of expecting production to come down a little bit in the first quarter. I’m assuming that’s all just kind of timing related, but just wanted to maybe get a little color around that. And then also just noticing that your cash G&A per barrel guidance also came down nicely as well. Is it at a function of spending kind of less than you expected there? Or maybe just perhaps production results have been better than with the acquisition, you’re seeing the BOEs go up and you’re just able to spread the cost out over more barrels?
Austen Gilfillian
On the production side, first, reported production will actually go up from Q4 to Q1. Q4, you’re going to have two third of contribution from the GRP assets we have the midpoint there of 24.5%. And then going into the first quarter. Actual reported production will go up given you have a full quarter of those assets contributions. But we’re trying to be intellectually honest there, look at it on a pro forma basis. And that’s kind of what we’re pointing to there with a slight sequential decline. And really, that in context, that follows back-to-back quarters the 5% growth that we’ve had here, and it’s mainly a result of just kind of the timing of some of these really large Diamondback pad where we have really high interest. And we put in Slide 9 of the deck where we kind of show the visibility to the Diamondback schedule. The way that we kind of see 2024 right now with the Diamondback side having -- owning an interest in about 60% of Diamondback’s completions next year with about a 6.5% interest within those wells, but that will be split roughly 40-60 between first half of the year and the second half of the year. So still significant growth coming, especially on the Diamondback operative side. Is it mostly significant second half weighted given some of the bigger pads? And then on the cost items, I mean, those are all very minimal. We’ve kind of been spending $6 million, $7 million, maybe $8 million a year in cash G&A. As production growth goes up and we grow the business, we’re not really having to add any people. So on a per unit basis, but those should continue to trend down even further over time.
Leo Mariani
Okay, thank you.
Operator
Thank you. At this time, the Q&A session has now ended. I will now turn the call over to Travis Stice for closing remarks.
Travis Stice
Thank you again to everyone participating in today’s call. If you have any questions, please contact us using the information provided. Thank you.
Transcript from November 7, 2023

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