SandRidge Energy, Inc. (NYSE:SD) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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David Cardell: Yes. I’m interested in exploring more the M&A environment, and I’m curious if deal prices are better on smaller deals or for larger deals. I’m curious how big a deal you feel you could do. And I’m also curious about — right now, you would think that the price environment is very good that there being a lot of opportunities. The Mid-Con, in a sense, is kind of an undervalued basin and the pricing, Henry Hub gas prices are so low. So I would think that there would be deals to be had. And I appreciate the fact that you are very careful. I totally am on board with that. But I’m just trying to get a realistic understanding about what we can expect over the course of the year. How you’re seeing the deal flow? What there there is out there, if it’s looking better? So I realized I’ve asked a lot of questions on an M&A, but if you can opine on any of those, that would be helpful.

Grayson Pranin: I’ll try to hit as many of them as I can. If I miss anything, please follow back up. I think we’re seeing a constructive M&A market within the Mid-Con. We agree with you that Mid-Con is a place we are able to generate meaningful cash flow just like we have in our incumbent assets. We think we can further leverage that by expanding our asset base and taking our cost focus efforts, both to the expense and the back office side leverage, and we know the area well. So we continue to see things — like I mentioned to Josh, the challenge is you have to have alignment between the buyer and seller. We’re committed as a Board and management team to make this a top priority. With return of capital, M&A is right behind it, making sure that we are actively looking at and evaluating opportunities that make sense and trying to do something that’s really accretive to shareholders, trying to take advantage of the currently lower natural gas prices.

But again, we can’t opine on success right there, only that we’re going to roll up our sleeves, look at things that are small but make sense, look at things that are a little bit larger, and it still makes sense. And relative to how does one look to the other, it depends on the asset type. Obviously where we bought back interest in the wells that we operate, we have an operating advantage there. So those things are really intuitive, make lot of sense, and you have a really strong margin there. As we look at opportunities where we don’t currently operate, there are things where you can get a better discount rate on things, both smaller and larger, depending on the asset quality. Are those things well historied? Are they relatively newer where there’s more subjective interpretation of the performance?

Is there upside? Those are all things that we look at and value differently, depending on the assets. So hopefully I covered all your questions, David, please let me know if I haven’t.

David Cardell: There is one more. I’m just curious, are you more likely to find good deals on small-sized acquisitions or maybe big deals, they are better deals because there are fewer bidders. And I’m also curious, how big a deal could you do?

Grayson Pranin: Sure. Again, go back to my previous comment, I think there are great small ball deals. I think there are really good larger deals. We would have to have a string of pearls on the smaller deals where they may have a better cash-on-cash return. They’re harder to string together to be as impactful. It’s like the differences for our organic opportunities with our capital workover program that have really high rates of return versus our prior drilling campaign that still had high rates of return, a little bit less but contributes more meaningfully on a value basis. So we think there’s justification for looking at both because there’s different drivers between each of those options and know that we’re going to do something that makes sense.

David Cardell: Okay. I’ll just say that personally I think there is dislocation in your share price given your net cash balance, your asset, your low-cost operations. Personally, I think that the stock is dislocated from the value that it offers shareholders.

Grayson Pranin: Well, appreciate your comment, David. I think that’s something that we look at consistently from day to day, make sure we’re making good long-term decisions. And we want to ensure that when we do repurchase shares, we’re doing it at a level that also have good returns. So we’re valuing that option right alongside all the other options, so it’s not an either or answer. But know that will continue to [Technical Difficulty] as we move forward through the year.

Operator: [Operator Instructions]. There are no further questions at this time. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today’s conference call. You may now disconnect.

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