Magnolia Oil & Gas Corporation (NYSE:MGY) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Oliver Huang: Good morning, Chris and Brian, and thanks for taking my questions. Just wanted to hit on the 2024 outlook really quick. I think you all did a great job last year in being able to exceed initial expectations. CapEx 17% lower for nearly inline production volumes. And I know last year is probably a unique year, just kind of given the misalignment to start the year on service costs. But as we kind of look forward into 2024, what are some of the key levers or upside catalysts that you all foresee, or most excited about that could drive better than expected capital efficiency? And also any sort of color on what drives the lower and higher ends of the CapEx guidance range would be helpful as well.

Chris Stavros: Thanks, Oliver. I don’t know how much of a disconnect there was, but we got after this early and I credit our teams both on the supply chain side and on the operations side, drilling completions and working with everyone to make it happen. But it didn’t just happen. It took a lot of work talking with the vendors and creating some linkage between us and them as being true partners and we did benefit from some of the weakness in large gassier fields to the northeast of us, that where activity was slowing up and we saw some benefit from that proximity to us. But it did take a lot of work. In terms of what’s left, we’ve locked in our costs certainly for the first half of the year. So I’m very comfortable with where things are headed in the first half of the year in terms of our outlook.

For the second half of the year, it doesn’t seem to me as if activity is just going to soar away higher. In fact, maybe you sort of see things flat to a little bit lower or softer, considering where gas prices are. It’s not all that pleasant. And so we’ll just have to see. It may provide us with a little bit of wiggle room for the back half of the year, but generally, things feel pretty good. On the specific areas or items, we did a terrific job around efficiencies last year, especially on the completion side and completion — and stages per day. I’d like to think that we could see some improvements on the drilling side and we’ll work towards that with hopefully some efficiencies and maybe something on the cost side as well, but we’ll see. So I hope that gives you a little bit of color.

Oliver Huang: Yeah, that’s definitely helpful. And just a quick follow-up on a comment you made earlier about potentially higher working interest in wells this year. Just wondering if there’s any way to kind of quantify the magnitude of that shift, really just trying to get a sense of how the net lateral footage might have increased on a year-over-year basis?

Chris Stavros: We can get back to you and answer that more specifically.

Oliver Huang: Sounds good. Thanks for the time, guys.

Chris Stavros: Okay. Thank you.

Operator: The next question comes from Ati Modak of Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Ati Modak: Hi. Good morning, team. Thank you for taking the questions. I guess you mentioned there’s still a lot of opportunity in acquisitions in the Giddings area. Just wondering if these are largely smaller acreages or are there entities that are relatively large as well. And what is the level of interest, maybe that those players have to try and replicate what you are doing versus hand the asset over to you? And does that mean that you would be more active in M&A this year versus last?

Chris Stavros: I don’t know what the other operators are looking to do or willing to do or able to do, frankly, if they’re looking to replicate our plan or whatever. I wouldn’t think that this is necessarily going to be a more active year than what we just had in 2023. We are going to — our plan is to digest and integrate some of what we’ve done last year, which was overall a bit of a heavier year in deal-related activity for us, acquisitions. So there is some digestion and integration that needs to occur. So I think if there are some things, they’ll tend to be a bit smaller, but may hopefully pack a punch. And really, again, as I said, fill in that mosaic of what we’ve been trying to accomplish in recent history and going forward. So I don’t think it’s going to be larger, at least that’s not my sense right now.

Ati Modak: Got it. And then anything around the expectations for well productivity in ’24 versus the prior years? If you can talk about oil per foot basis, how should we think about the trends this year?

Chris Stavros: Yeah, I mean that’s been talked about, to be honest, and it’s sort of an evolution of the program in Giddings over time. I mean early days, there were — the population set of wells was smaller, obviously, and much more focused and concentrated within a very, very limited area. And as that’s broadened out, there may have been some movement around the productivity, but frankly, not in a major way or a terrible way. I think that this year’s program and results should yield similar results to what you saw in ’23. I don’t see any major change, frankly.