Earthstone Energy, Inc. (NYSE:ESTE) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Operator: Thank you. Our next questions come from the line of Neal Dingmann with Truist Securities. Please proceed with your question.

Neal Dingmann: Thanks for the time. Maybe, Robert, a little bit on to the last question you were just talking about. My question is kind of two-fold here. You mentioned about possible divestures. And if you’re successful with divestitures, I just wonder how much you think that might be. Combine that with what it sounds like you can certainly, with all the new properties and the new scale, get well-product — improved well productivity, all this leads us to believe certainly could be under, if not even before, by mid next year, one-time, would you and Mark think about it might be too early to talk about, but where are you thinking about shareholder return, you’re starting to get well under one-time at that point.

Robert Anderson: Okay. Neal, you asked a lot of questions in there. I’ll start from the backwards and shareholder returns. It’s on our mind. I don’t think anything’s changed. You got it right. We get under one-time, we get our revolver paid down to some amount next year, and we start thinking about what we can do on the shareholder return front, and we haven’t given up on continuing to evaluate different opportunities or options for that. But again, like we’ve said in the past, we will focus on creating value. And if we see the right opportunity come our way, we’ll figure out a way to make it work and acquire more assets as it makes sense, and we’ll try and see if we can balance that with shareholder returns at some point.

Neal Dingmann: Okay. And then just maybe a quick one for — the second part of that, just on divestitures, what’s — how sizable can those be?

Mark Lumpkin: Probably not too much different than what we’ve already done. In total, over the next 12 to 18 months, it’s another $100 million perhaps. Maybe it’s a little bit more. Oil prices continue to go up, maybe that helps us out a bit. It’s not sizable, but are things that would streamline our operations for sure. And we don’t know if we’re going to be successful in selling assets, but we’ll sell what makes sense to sell.

Neal Dingmann: Got it. And then maybe a quick one for you or Steve. Just very noticeable on those top two wells, I appreciate you kind of have that slide that list all the wells and some of your top wells and both in that sort of portion of Eddy County. Again, what’s the plan to drill in that area? And is there anything unique about those two wells?

Mark Lumpkin: Nothing unique. We’ve got lots of wells like that. We love all those wells equally. I think we’re going to finish up some drilling on that Stateline area, later this month, next month, something like that, and we’ll be completing some wells probably in the late third quarter, fourth quarter and bringing on another, I can’t remember exactly that’s three wells or four wells, something like that…

Steve Collins: Four wells in the quarter

Mark Lumpkin: Four wells would be at the end of the quarter, will get started. So we’ve got some more lined up. And then we’ve got probably, hopefully some — a few other surprises in Lea County as we complete wells there that we’re working on now.

Neal Dingmann: I would like your surprises. Thanks guys.

Operator: Thank you. Our next questions come from the line of Subash Chandra with the Benchmark Company. Please proceed with your questions.

Subash Chandra: Thanks. Hi, Robert. Question on — now that you’re here, right, whatever here is 135,000 BOE product. Are you thinking any differently about building the business and running the business, for instance, like the Wolfcamp D, is there going to be more for lack of a better term, exploration and what you do more of a focus on maintaining or increasing the inventory count versus PDP type transactions, things of that nature?

Robert Anderson: Yes. Subash, we are now definitely more focused on inventory than straight PDP and it all depends on what the seller has. I mean we’ve looked at deals where there’s still outsized PDP component compared to inventory, but it’s got really good inventory. So we spend time looking at that and see how it fit in our development plans and portfolio. But we are even like the Wolfcamp D, there’s a whole bunch of other zones out there we can talk about, those aren’t exploration, and we’re not an exploration company. We’ll take low risk development opportunities and go exploit those that make sense in our development plan. The Wolfcamp D is like that, the Jo Mill and it places the loader Spraberry is the same in the Midland side of the basin and then you get into New Mexico and there’s the Avalon and deeper benches in the Wolfcamp and shallower benches above the Avalon.