Highpeak Energy Inc

NASDAQ:HPK

Earnings Call Analysis

HighPeak Energy Exceeds Production and Lowers Costs

HighPeak Energy reported a strong second quarter with production averaging over 52,000 BOE per day, exceeding prior estimates. The firm revised its 2024 production guidance to 45,000-49,000 BOE a day, a 4.5% increase, and reduced lease operating expenses to $6.50-$7.50 per BOE, a 12.5% drop. Strategic infrastructure investments and operational efficiencies contributed to these results. HighPeak also lowered its capital budget to $40 million, supporting continued financial health and debt reduction initiatives. The focus remains on optimizing operations and maximizing shareholder value through sustainable production and disciplined cost management.

Solid Operational Performance

HighPeak Energy reported strong operational success in the second quarter of 2024, with production figures averaging over 52,000 barrels of oil equivalent (BOE) per day in the third quarter, reflecting a sharp increase from the previous quarter's average of around 48,500 BOE per day. Even amidst slight delays in bringing some wells online, the company's production outperformed consensus estimates. Additionally, for the year, production guidance was raised to a range of 45,000 to 49,000 BOE per day, marking a 4.5% increase from earlier estimates.

Cost Reduction and Profitability

HighPeak successfully maintained low lease operating expenses, achieving a cost range of $6.50 to $7.50 per BOE—this represents a 12.5% decrease compared to previous expectations. Their cash margins per BOE remained strong, with a netback of over 80% of the realized price on a BOE basis, translating to an impressive unhedged EBITDAX margin of $50.07 per BOE, significantly higher than peers averaging $30 per BOE at similar prices. This efficiency in operations is a key contributor to enhanced profitability and shareholder value.

Strategic Financial Management

The company continued its prudent financial strategy by reducing long-term debt by $30 million and engaging in a share buyback program, acquiring over 413,000 shares in the second quarter. With additional free cash flow expected, HighPeak will maintain a focus on debt reduction while also exploring strategic alternatives for maximizing shareholder value.

Infrastructure Investments Paying Off

HighPeak has built and expanded a world-class infrastructure system in the Permian Basin, which is proving to support life-of-field development and significantly reduces future capital expenditures. This infrastructure positions the company well for sustained production growth and profitability as it moves to exploit new areas. The ability to recycle produced water through their facilities lowers operating costs and increases efficiency.

Long-Term Growth Prospects

Over the past four years, HighPeak has demonstrated robust production growth, increasing output by over 14x since going public. The company has drilled 289 operated wells, producing over 50 million gross BOEs, placing it on track to generate over $1 billion in revenues annually. Such growth frames a bullish outlook on HighPeak's ability to continue identifying value in its expansive acreage and leveraging new drilling opportunities.

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q2

[Operator]

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the HighPeak Energy 2024 Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Steven Tholen, CFO.

[Steven Tholen, executive]

Representing HighPeak today are Chairman and CEO, Jack Hightower, President, Michael Hollis; and I'm Steven Tholen, the Chief Financial Officer. During today's call, we will make reference to our August investor presentation and our second quarter earnings release, which can be found on HighPeak's website. Today's call participants may make certain forward-looking statements relating to the company's financial condition, results of operations, expectations, plans, goals, assumptions and future performance.





Please refer to the cautionary information regarding forward-looking statements and related risks in the company's SEC filings, including the fact that actual results may differ materially from our expectations due to a variety of reasons, many of which are beyond our control. We will also refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures on today's call. Please see the reconciliations in the earnings release and in our August Investor Presentation. I will now turn the call over to our Chairman and CEO, Jack Hightower.

[Jack Hightower, executive]

My prepared remarks will begin on Slide 4 of our August Investor Presentation. I'm very proud to report that HighPeak had another solid quarter of execution across the board as we continue to stay committed to our 2024 core values, which include maintaining disciplined operations, strengthening our balance sheet and focusing on maximizing shareholder value. Operationally, our drilling program continued to generate impressive production results and our operations team remains aggressively focused on optimizing daily operations and reducing our cost structure.



Financially, we generated positive free cash flow for the fourth consecutive quarter, even taking into account that the second quarter will be our highest level of CapEx spend this year. We continue to use our free cash flow to prioritize debt reduction while also executing our opportunistic share buyback program as we implement our primary objective of increasing shareholder value through improved operational results, our return of capital strategy and ultimately maximizing value to our strategic alternatives process. The second quarter, if you turn to Slide 5, was another strong operational success for HighPeak. Our production remained in the high 40,000 BOE range, which was a nice beat compared to our consensus estimate for the quarter. It's also worth noting that we were delayed bringing online a key pad, which pushed out some of our well turn-on dates no later than we initially expected in the quarter.





This materially reduced expected second quarter production volumes. Further, the quarter is off to a very strong start in the third quarter as production volumes have averaged over 52,000 barrels a day. I want to emphasize that when you think of an average of 48.5% for the last quarter and then already in the third quarter here, we're over 52,000 barrels a day and seeing impressive early results from our recent northern extension wells in our Flat Top operating area. Mike will provide additional insights into our continued strong production results later in the presentation. After achieving an impressive first quarter reduction in lease operating expenses, our operations team continued to maintain a significant sub-$7 per BOE cost level, even considering the lower production volumes due to the pad delay.





Our continued operational success led to HighPeak maintaining its peer-leading cash margins, which equated to a netback for the quarter of over 80% of our realized price on a BOE basis. Our cash margins per BOE continue to be over 65% higher than our peer average, which Mike will emphasize is very important to our income stream and our success as a company. As a result of our solid production volumes and sustained lower operating expenses, we generated another strong quarter of cash flow and remain in a very healthy financial position. We also reduced long-term debt by another $30 million at par and continue to opportunistically implement our share buyback program by acquiring over 413,000 shares during the second quarter.





Now if you'll turn to Slide 6. This is really an important slide because we are exceeding our expectations. As a result of our successful first half '24 results, we're updating our '24 guidance ranges in a few key categories. We're raising our production guidance to 45,000-49,000 BOE a day, an approximate 4.5% increase compared to our initial '24 range. Our production volumes continue to remain strong, and we are confident in lifting this bar for the remainder of the year. We're also lowering our lease operating expenses per BOE to $6.50-$7.50, which is a 12.5% reduction from our initial expectations. Our operations team has done an exceptional job optimizing our fill wide program throughout the first half of this year. I'm hopeful that there are incremental savings that we will continue to see throughout the remainder of the year.





We're also narrowing our capital budget from our initial band of $85 million down to a band of only $40 million. This slight increase is due to some additional infrastructure projects that we undertook primarily related to our Northern Extension area, and Mike will provide some additional color on this in a few minutes. The key takeaway is that we've had a very impressive start to the year with our results exceeding initial expectations, and we're confident in our ability to continue to achieve higher production volumes and lower costs for the remainder of the year. With that, I'll now turn the call over to our President, Mike Hollis to provide an operational update as well as some additional details supporting our improved guidance.

[Michael Hollis, executive]

Now turning to Slide 7. As Jack discussed, we go off to a great start this year as shown by our higher-than-expected production volumes. Our first half production averaged approximately 49,100 BOE per day, which is an increase of roughly 8% compared to our 2023 annual average. Further, our third quarter is off to a great start as well at over 52,000 BOE a day, and our current 2-rig development program is expected to continue to support higher volumes throughout the remainder of the year as evidenced by our raising the production guidance. A few key drivers of this success. Our new wells in our northern and northeastern extension areas in Flat Top have exhibited higher initial performance than we originally modeled.



Again, as prudent operators, we always start off very conservative as we move to any new area. Our Judith well located in the northeast corner of Flat Top and is referenced by the #1 on the map, exhibited a peak 30-day average IP of over 1,350 barrels of oil a day plus associated gas. It has cumed approximately 85,000 BOEs during the first 70 days of production. Our first 10,000-foot Wolfcamp A Well located in our northern expansion area, that's #2 on the map, is currently making over 700 barrels a day of oil and is continuing to increase production as we can pull on the well longer. We also have a 2-well pad further to the east on this new acreage denoted by the #3. The Wolfcamp A and Lower Spraberry wells on that pad have been drilled, completed, and we expect to turn them online during the third quarter.





The petrophysical analysis and cuttings from these two wells confirmed that the reservoir is consistent with what we see in our core flat top area. We continue to be very encouraged and excited about this northern area of the field. In addition to the successful new wells in our northern extension areas, we are continuing to see strong well performance across our entire acreage. The operations team is firing on all cylinders, and we continue to see better uptime and lower cost across the board. Now turning to Slide 8. As Jack previously mentioned, our team has been intensely focused on reducing cost across the board, and they delivered again this quarter. HighPeak been raised to production and beaten lower to LOE guidance, assuming second quarter pricing equates to $55 million of additional EBITDAX as well as free cash flow for 2024. Some key drivers to our step change in LOE year-over-year are: optimization of our chemical program throughout the field, our operations team has been keenly focused on this initiative and continues to make further strides.





Chemical call off is a significant component of our OpEx. As I mentioned last quarter, we continue to fully exploit our world-class life of field infrastructure system. Part of this exploitation is being able to dispose of 100% of our produced water that is not being used for recycling through our company-owned system and not having to rely on any third-party disposal. This drives significant OpEx cost reductions as third-party disposal is inherently more expensive. On that note, a key contributor to our higher LOE in the second quarter compared to the first, was the central tank battery delay that Jack commented on earlier. The battery commissioning was delayed about a month. We turned those wells on in the second quarter had all the usual costs associated with production and no BOEs to divide by.



As you can see in our quarter-to-date production numbers, those wells are now contributing. Had the wells come on a month earlier, our LOE would have been more in line with the first quarter. Our overhead electric power distribution system continues to pay huge dividends for HighPeak. Not only does it provide more reliability to our operations, i.e., uptime, but we've expanded it to the point to where we've been able to tie in extension area wells into the overhead electrical system at start-up versus having to run new areas of the field on more expensive generator power until the overhead electrical system is ready. It's no secret that electrical power supply is getting tight in the Permian Basin. Additional power project time lines are being substantially pushed out. Our team has done a fantastic job in recognizing this situation well in advance, taking the initiative to secure an abundant supply and construct a distribution system that efficiently delivers reliable power across our entire field.





HighPeak is in a great position for life of field development even at an increased development cadence. In addition, our solar farm is now fully operational and is providing consistent renewable power to supplement our flat-top overhead electrical system. One thing for sure. There's no shortage of abundant West Texas sunshine during the summer months, and now we're able to exploit this to our material benefit. The solar farm will also help insulate our power cost during electrical spot pricing spikes that the region periodically faces throughout the summer months. Again, our operations team has done a tremendous job over the past few years in building out our world-class infrastructure and optimizing all field operations. All of which are now starting to materially improve our bottom line.



Now turning to focus on our capital budget for a moment. As we previously mentioned and messaged, our 2024 capital program was first half weighted, and that's due to a number of reasons. Our first half turn-in-line cadence is slightly higher at 55% of our annual guide range. This is primarily due to the additional wells that we carried into this calendar year from running a 3-rig program during the fourth quarter of last year and partially in Q1 of '24. Furthermore, our second quarter turn-in lines were approximately 32% of our entire 2024 program, which speaks to Q2 being our hottest CapEx quarter for the year. In addition to the extra wells turned in line during the first half, our infrastructure projects were also first half weighted. As we extended our systems to our new northern acreage areas in Flat Top, these extension projects provide immediate returns and were constructed in a manner to support full development of these new areas with only incremental future capital requirements.





Our facility spend was also first half weighted as we constructed new tank batteries in these extension areas of the field. As we progress in our development plan and drill more wells in these areas, our facility cost on a dollar per foot basis will drop considerably. DC&E costs are holding steady at prices that we realized during the first quarter as the industry has seen a reduction in rigs and frac spreads over the last quarter or several quarters, I would expect some additional softening this year, albeit small. To that fact, we've narrowed our CapEx budget for the remainder of the year and feel very confident that we will remain within our guided range. Now turning to Slide 9.





HighPeak's margins per BOE continue a commanding lead amongst our peer group. Our second quarter unhedged EBITDAX margins remained strong at $50.07 per BOE, which continued to be over 65% higher than our peer group average. The chart on the slide highlights that HighPeak EBITDAX margin over the past five quarters has averaged over 60% of average NYMEX oil prices or said another way, for every BOE that HighPeak produces, we realized a net profit of approximately $50, assuming an $80 NYMEX index price. In comparison with our peer group, who, on average, only generate profit margins of roughly $30 per BOE at an $80 NYMEX oil price.





Another way we like to evaluate our margins is to compare our EBITDAX margin per BOE as a percentage of our realized price per BOE. This is less of a comparison versus our peers and more of a view of how efficient we are converting our produced BOEs into net profit for HighPeak. Our second quarter margins show that for every BOE that HighPeak produced, we converted over 80% of the realized sales price per BOE into net profit for the company. We have built a very efficient machine here at HighPeak, which will allow us to cost-effectively convert our deep inventory of undrilled locations into substantial profit. As we always say, not all BOEs are created equal. Our high oil cut and our improved cost structure will allow HighPeak to continue to generate the differential profits for decades to come. With my comments now complete, I'll turn the call back over to Jack.

[Jack Hightower, executive]

Let's turn to the next page on Slide 10. I want to congratulate our operations team for a very successful quarter. This slide is an important slide to look back and see where you come from, from a historical growth comparative analysis. We've been in business now four years since we went public, and we want to take the opportunity to highlight a few noteworthy company facts. As you can see, HighPeak has demonstrated a track record of significant financially responsible production growth on an annual basis over the past four years. Production has increased by a factor of over 14x during a short 4-year life of the company. Think about that in terms of looking forward into the future. Through '24, we've drilled 289 operated horizontal wells across our acreage position.





Collectively, this amounts to drilling over 3.5 million lateral feet. On a combined basis, our wells have produced over 50 million gross BOEs since going public. This has led to HighPeak generating over $2.7 billion of revenue over four years, and we're now on track to generate over $1 billion per year from this year on. It shows you our history but also can project into the future as to what our growth can be going forward. I think it's important to look back as well as look forward as you go forward in the future. When you think about on the next slide, Slide 11, the takeaways I want to leave you with today is we're continuing to execute on all cylinders.





Our asset base continues to deliver strong production results full of oily, high-margin barrels. We expect this trend to continue, which is why we're confident in raising our production guidance. Throughout the past year, we have been intensely focused on optimizing our field-wide operations, expanding our world-class infrastructure system to reach all areas of the field and as Mike likes to say, life of production going forward. These have led to the realization of significant operating cost reductions as evidenced by our results through the first half of this year. We expect to maintain this lower step change in operating expenses going forward, and as such, are confident in lowering our LOE guidance range.





Second, we positioned the company for optimal value creation. We've amassed a sizable, highly contiguous acreage position prime for large-scale development. It's truly one of the few remaining opportunities of significant scale in the most sought after basin in the country, the Permian Basin. We rapidly increased our oil-weighted high-margin production and reserves to a significant level. We've delineated a long runway of high-value inventory, which spans our entire leasehold position. The scarcity of $50 per barrel breakeven inventory immense the current market trend of extreme consolidation puts HighPeak in a very unique and lucrative position.





We've built on a world-class infrastructure system, which will support life of field development and helps insulate our peer-leading profit margin for decades to come. I can't really provide specific details at this time, but I do want to say that our strategic process is making significant progress, and I'm very excited about what the future holds for HighPeak and our shareholders. With our comments now complete, I'll open the call up to questions from analysts.

[Operator]

Our first question comes from the line of John White with ROTH MKM Capital.

[John White, analyst]

In terms of lease operating expense, you talked about the past delays related to the tank battery, but weren't there a higher amount of well workover expenses in the quarter.

[Michael Hollis, executive]

If you're referring to quarter-over-quarter, Q1, we averaged about $0.39 per BOE for workover expenses, and we were closer to $0.69 or $0.68 this quarter. What drove a lot of that, again, we did 32% of our completions this quarter for the year. If you look at a general number and a good go-forward modeling number for HighPeak on a workover expense basis at our normal cadence it's somewhere between the $0.30-$0.45 of BOE is where I think we would run. That $0.25 difference between Q1 and Q2 was associated with a lot of the work that we did, bringing these wells on and completing those 26 wells throughout the quarter.



Whenever you do that, you do impact some of the wells on either side of what you're completing, and that heavy cadence of completions did drive us to have to do some expense workovers on some of the offset wells around there. That's what drove the change in Q2.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from the line of Jeff Robertson at Water Tower Research.

[Jeffrey Robertson, analyst]

Two questions. One on Slide 11. Your last bullet point, you talked about infrastructure supporting life of field development in Flat Top. Can you just talk about how that infrastructure investment that you have made would impact capital efficiency and returns going forward as you progress through your development program?

[Michael Hollis, executive]

Thank you for that question because it's often overlooked the value of the infrastructure that you put in. Obviously, it helps us initially when we build our infrastructure too. For instance, our new northern area where we built a lot of infrastructure to tie in one battery. From a capital efficiency standpoint of the initial dollars you put in, it's pretty low day one. However, when we develop that area and have 35, 40 wells coming through that same infrastructure, you're dollar per completed lateral foot cost associated with future wells goes down dramatically. As we've built out and have already spent the money on the vast majority of all the infrastructure that HighPeak needs, again, as Jack mentioned, for life of field and that's for all of the multiple zones that we plan to drill and at whatever cadence.





At one time, we were running as many as six rigs. Again, in the future, depending on commodity price and balance sheet strength, if we ever wanted to increase activity, we could. We've always talked about the ability to pull back the reins if oil prices were to go lower into the future. We have the leasehold position that's a very differential leasehold position that allows us to hold this whole 137,000 acres with just one rig or less running. It's a very unique system that we've built. As you pointed out, every additional well that we drill in the future gets the benefit from that money that we've spent over the last 3.5 years building out that infrastructure.

[Jack Hightower, executive]

I would add, Jeff, to that, we've got an infrastructure now that can go all the way up to 550,000 barrels of product to support our growth. When you think of 2,600 locations potentially, even if you go back to 1,150 locations just in the Wolf A and Lower Spraberry and with success in the Middle Spraberry and some other zones, that's expanding rapidly. We and others have invested almost $1 billion now on the infrastructure here. That will allow us to expand across our entire acreage position and be able to handle with 100% recycling of the oil and the water as well as completions in the future and be able to handle that and dispose of the excess with our own saltwater disposal system.



That infrastructure now is basically in place. We'll spend a few additional capital dollars going forward, but it will be very limited expenditures.

[Michael Hollis, executive]

Obviously, we reduced LOE in the guide down from a midpoint of $8 to a midpoint of 7%. Again, being conservative, we want to make sure that we meet and beat that as well. You see that on Slide 7 on the production side where we're sitting with production in the guide that we increased the midpoint from 45,000 BOEs to 47,000. You may have missed this in the prepared remarks, those two changes in guide over the 2024 calendar year equate to an EBITDA change of about $55 million. Since we're in a free cash flow mode this full year as well as going forward, all of that additional EBITDA goes to free cash flow as well. Again, all of this money and systems and infrastructure we've put in place is paying dividends now and will continue in the future.

[Operator]

Our last question comes from Nicholas Pope with Seaport Research.

[Nicholas Pope, analyst]

I was hoping you guys could talk a little bit about the uses of cash. Obviously, it's a good problem to have, but we're looking at three items here with dividends, share repurchases the last two quarters and options to pay down debt. I was curious how you're thinking about that going forward. Obviously, that debt is very high, interest payments. I think it's 20% of EBITDA. Curious how you're weighing that relative to these other two shareholder return options that you have in place?

[Jack Hightower, executive]

Nick, that is a great question, and we're going to stick with our program to pay down debt. Now we're going to keep the cash on the balance sheet because right now, we have made cold provisions, and we want to make sure we pay that debt down at par. Of course, our whole provisions run out in March. We are fully aware that we could refinance and our costs with a BB rating would go down to six something, even with a new issuance in the -seven something-percent range. We've got to pretty well make the whole payment between now and March. It will probably be after that before we would consider changing.



Our goal is to pay down debt. Now we have the optionality of drilling more if oil prices happen to go way up but we're going to stick with our program and stick with what we've been doing in the past and eventually, if we don't successfully have a strategic alternative by then, we would refinance our term debt and pay off our bonds and go forward. Of course, the difference in the cost of that debt compared to what a bond would be today is almost $220 million a year of additional cash flow. We have good optionality, but we're very encouraged by our strategic alternative process.

[Nicholas Pope, analyst]

Switching to some little more fun these new wells. Curious, going into these Northeastern extensional areas the newer acreage. I'm curious as you went into those, were there any big questions that you thought needed to be answered. As you get the data from the production of these new wells, is there new zones, new productivity? How does that match up, I guess, with what the expectations were going into the wells? Do you think that affects inventory and the numbers that we've talked about in the past?

[Michael Hollis, executive]

Again, any operator, as you move more than a couple of miles away from known production, we're all engineers in the background. We like to be conservative. When we say they beat expectations, yes, these wells beat the expectations they were using as we were modeling to make sure we had enough risk for that 2-mile walkout or as we went north to go yet another two miles north of where we were. From a petrophysical standpoint, from log analysis from the cuttings, everything suggested that it should be just as good as what we had down in what we call the core of the flat top area. We were we not expecting to see what we did. No, the answer was we fully expected to get this result. To answer your question about additional zones, these wells were Wolfcamp A wells and Lower Spraberry.





Now I mentioned at the end of last quarter that we were most likely going to drill a middle Spraberry well sometime in the near future but we have already drilled and completed our first Middle Spraberry well, which sits down in the center part of Flat Top, and we are running the pump in the ground today. We'll have some information for the third quarter call. Again, there's offset wells touching the west side of our acreage block. As we drill that Middle Spraberry well, all things were encouraging from cuttings to oil cut that we saw in some of the returns while drilling. Again, we should be able to give an update on that additional zone that we've targeted in flattop, but no, these two new areas are acting as we suspected they would, and as they should for modeling. It's just when we do guidance, we always try to put a little left in there for the good guys.

[Jack Hightower, executive]

The only thing I would add, Nick, to what Mike said is from a geological and petrophysical and oil-in-place analysis, we feel like our whole acreage position even moving to the East. As you can well imagine, we still have certain companies that think as we move east, that the production is going to decline and yet, our Judith well, which is our furthest eastern well outside the well in Scurry County, the Virginia well is our most successful well. It was a little bit of we anticipated potentially, but it's turning out to be one of our very best wells. As we move east, we are very excited about the potential of those wells in that production and definitely adding more locations to the east and at least being able to prove that up to potential suitors.



That was an exciting arrangement. And then going forward, we're probably going to drill another Wolf B well, and we'll drill some more Middle Spraberry wells, and we'll probably drill another well down to the south at Signal Peak in the Hutton, the Wolfcamp C zone. A lot of good things are happening for us, and that definitely adds to the number of locations that we have.

[Operator]

This concludes the question-and-answer session. Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect.