Range Resources Corporation (NYSE:RRC) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Jacob Roberts : Thanks so much. I appreciate the time guys.

Dennis Degner: Thank you.

Operator: Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Umang Chaudhry with Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open.

Umang Chaudhry : Hi, good morning, and thank you for taking my questions. Thank you. I wanted to get your updated thoughts on the natural gas and the NGLs macro as we see today. And then, I also had a follow-up on your thoughts around free cash flow allocation towards debt reduction and share repurchase, given your line of sight towards the $1.5 billion number. So what your thoughts are on both those topics? Thank you.

Jeff Ventura: Good. Good morning, Umang. I’ll start with the natural gas and NGL market €“ macro, sorry, and then hand over to Mark for your financial questions. But you know as we think about the natural gas macro, I think through this earnings season it’s been fairly apparent that you’re seeing companies like that had had maintenance level programs continue that effort this year. Range is clearly in that net category as well. It’s something we’ve talked about a lot, but also you’re starting to hear about rig activity potentially starting to slow in other basins like the Haynesville for example. We think that bodes well for you know the go-forward outlook for natural gas. You’ve got freeport LNG now starting to see feed gas come through the facility and ships start to leave the docks, and we think that’s also no doubt constructive and positive for the go-forward look.

And then we’ve coursed up the next wave of LNG that will be coming online, starting sometime in the balance of 2024. So we think all of this aligns well as we look forward. You couple that with the demand outlook, there’s still going to be materializing in the background through ’23 and ’24. You’re still talking about something as you kind of link all this back to a day supply from a natural gas perspective, that’s not too dissimilar before we were at, before going into this winter. So we think that this still could have a €“ no doubt a constructive outlook as we start to see activity start to modulate through the balance of the year, especially in the basins that have had a higher level activity going forward. NGL piece, Alan’s touched on it a number of times in prior calls, but you know as you start to look at the number of exports, barrels that are leaving the docks from a propane perspective as an example in LPG, we’re still seeing some record level exports occur today, which is really encouraging, and of course we’re all watching the reopening of China take place, and we know that that will translate into further supporting of reducing stock levels and continuing to support a back half of the year, constructive outlook for further NGL price improvements.

Now, I’ll turn it over to Mark for the financial piece.

Mark Scucchi : Good morning, Umang. I think you know the nature of your question is in and of itself important, that at Range this year as we look at price is obviously off somewhat from the last year or so, our story remains the same. We’re talking about free cash flow and the same business plan that we talked about for the last couple years. We generated free cash flow, reduced debt, returned capital to shareholder, although executing on a really efficient capital program, looking full cycle cost structure. Looking at our line items, unit costs remain extremely competitive and certainly on the capital front if you take CapEx dollar per mcfe, it’ll be best in the business. So with that, we’re talking about free cash flow generation and degrees of free cash flow generation.