Earnings Labs

Antero Resources Corporation (AR)

Q3 2015 Earnings Call· Fri, Oct 30, 2015

$38.70

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day. And welcome to the Antero Resources Third Quarter 2015 Earnings Conference Call and Webcast. All participants will be in listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] After today’s presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. [Operator Instructions] Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Michael Kennedy, Vice President of Finance and Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Michael Kennedy

Analyst

Thank you for joining us for Antero’s third quarter 2015 investor conference call. We will spend a few minutes going through the financial and operational highlights and then we’ll open it up for Q&A. I would also like to direct you to the homepage of our website at www.anteroresources.com, where we have provided a separate earnings call presentation that will be reviewed during today’s call. Before we start our comments, I’d like to first remind you that during this call, Antero management will make forward-looking statements. Such statements are based on our current judgments, regarding factors that will impact the future performance of Antero and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond Antero’s control. Actual outcomes and results could materially differ from what is expressed, implied or forecast in such statements. Joining me on the call today are Paul Rady, Chairman and CEO; and Glen Warren, President and CFO. I will now turn the call over to Glen.

Glen Warren

Analyst

Thanks, Mike. And thank you to everyone for listening to the call today. In my comments I am going to highlight some of the key achievements from our third quarter 2015 results, discuss our peer leading EBITDAX, EBITDAX margins and price realizations, and review the dropdown of our water business from Antero Resources to Antero Midstream. Paul will then discuss operational highlights from the quarter, provide an update on the regional gathering line expected to be in place online in December of this year. Review current well costs and expectations moving forward and provide further commentary on our preliminary 2016 development plans. On the production front, we had another outstanding quarter, setting record quarterly production levels passing the 1.5 Bcfe a day quarterly production mark for the first time in our history. Liquids production during the quarter averaged over 52,000 barrels a day and made up nearly 21% of our production stream and that’s C3+ NGL, of course, plus condensate. Both the overall production growth and liquids production growth were driven by outstanding results in our Utica operations, where we placed 25 wells online during the quarter. Utica net production increased over 120 million cubic feet a day equivalent to an average of 365 million cubic feet a day equivalent, including liquids production of 19,250 barrels a day for the quarter. During the quarter, we once again realized peer leading EBITDAX and EBITDAX margins and price realizations driven by our record production, attractive firm transportation portfolio, significant hedge, hedge book and reduced operating cost, which I’ll touch on shortly. As outlined on slide two of our earnings call presentation, titled Antero Outperformance. We achieved an EBITDAX margin of $1.97 per Mcfe, with $291 million of consolidated EBITDAX. As you can see on the top half of that page, page two,…

Paul Rady

Analyst

Thanks, Glen. In my comments today, I am going to further discuss operational highlights from the quarter, provide an update on the in-service timing of the regional gathering pipeline that we’ve discussed on past calls and its impact to Antero’s bottom line. I’ll review current well costs and expectations moving forward. And I’ll provide additional commentary over our preliminary 2016 production growth targets. First, let me provide some additional color as it relates to some of our key operational highlights from the quarter, particularly in the Utica. As Glen mentioned earlier, we completed and placed online 25 wells in the Utica during the quarter. And this represented over 80% of the wells that we placed online during the quarter and over 26% of all Utica wells that we’ve put to sales since the beginning of 2013. So it was a very productive quarter in the Utica. The Utica activity is what really drove both our overall production growth, and more specifically our liquids production growth, with an average liquids content from these 25 wells of 33% in ethane rejection. With all that being said, we also completed the driest, most down-dip Utica pad by Antero to date, the so-called Laura Ditch pad. Even under a flow-back management program, these wells had an impressive combined average 30 day rate of 64 million cubic feet equivalent per day, with average flowing casing pressure of 3,400 pounds per well for the 30 days. As a reminder, through our attractive firm transport portfolio, we are able to sell our Utica gas volumes to the Chicago market, and the Michigan market, which historically trade at a premium to NYMEX pricing. Driven by the attractive, Chicago and Michigan pricing, along with the BTU upgrade we receive on our gas from rejecting ethane and leaving it in…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Neal Dingmann of SunTrust. Please go ahead. : Hey, guys. Good morning. This is Will for Neal. Nice quarter. First question, looking at your kind of talking about the ‘16 growth target, how do you guys see activity shifting in the current environment between dry gas, wet, or focusing on the dry gas Utica in West Virginia or in Ohio?

Paul Rady

Analyst

We continue to see good rates of return in our rich Marcellus, but we also like to dry. So I think we will see that there will be a shift in the Utica to little dryer and still about the same BTU levels in the Marcellus. We will juggle back and forth the emphasis based on regional takeaway. So it may be a little more capital spending and a little more drilling over on the Marcellus side, with the regional gathering line that we just described. And then as we wait for more pipe to come into the Utica and some of our firm transport on ETC Rover will come online we expect at the end of 2016. And so until then, midway through the year we’ll start to fill up our Rex capacity and perhaps will use other people’s capacity beyond what we have. So there will be a little bit of juggling, but getting a little dryer in the Utica and staying about the same BTU in the Marcellus. : Okay. Thank you. And then on -- you talked about Stonewall quite a bit, can you help us get a better idea of what the net cost is for you all to move gas on that system?

Paul Rady

Analyst

Yeah, I think it’s in the $0.20 range, let’s say, is probably a good estimate there. : Okay. Thanks.

Paul Rady

Analyst

All right. Are there any other questions?

Operator

Operator

Okay. The next question comes from Holly Stewart of Howard Weil. Please go ahead.

Holly Stewart

Analyst

Good morning, gentlemen.

Paul Rady

Analyst

Hi, Holly.

Holly Stewart

Analyst

First question, maybe just on the West Virginia dry gas Utica well, is there a plan to flow test that well, or are you just going to flow it under a restricted rate?

Paul Rady

Analyst

Just flow is under restricted rates. So we have of course a frac design. Let me back up and say we are pleased with the way that the drilling went. We’ve got a lot experience in drilling deep, high pressured wells. We have used an extra big rig, extra big high pressure stack on it, so really didn’t see any difficulties in getting the well down and cased, so feel good about that. And so we will be fracking it over the next month or so, and the plan is to use combination of resin coated and ceramic proppant and we’ve got our design. So we will frac it. We will flow it back under restricted rate. We definitely don’t want to suffer any flowback of proppant or crushing. So we will keep it somewhat restricted. And so it will probably be a little bit of time before we begin to see decline in it. We know from certain offset wells we could open it up. We’ve had lot of big wells in our time in both plays. And in any of them, you can open it up and get an impressive marquee flow rate, but I think we will restrict it in that 15 million or 20 million a day range.

Holly Stewart

Analyst

Great. Thank you. And then I guess, Glen, care to share the ASE on the wall?

Paul Rady

Analyst

I think this one has a little bit more science to it in that we went to straight down first, drilled the pilot portion, so we could see the Utica Point Pleasant in the vertical sense. So we did high resolution logs, we did pressure tests, sidewalk cores and so on. So we could fully understand it and also make sure which exact zone we wanted to go sideways in. So that cost a little extra to come back up and then kick off and go sideways, but I think this will be around $15 million roughly all in and can we get development wells, a few million dollars less than that, that might be possible.

Holly Stewart

Analyst

Okay. Great. Thank you. And then I guess the final one on the West Virginia dry Utica, is there any intention in 2016 to allocate additional capital there?

Paul Rady

Analyst

It’s possible. It might be a little early. I think we don’t expect the Rover line that comes down to Sherwood to come in until mid ‘17. So until then, any dry gas that we develop would come, we would probably send through our rich gas system and not the end of the world that we would be sending dry gas through the Sherwood processing complex. There may be some other alternatives, Eureka Hunter and so on that possibly would connect us more directly without going through plan, but we’d have to let those considerations unfold.

Holly Stewart

Analyst

Got it. And last one for me, just on maybe the M&A landscape. It sounds like there’s a lot of asset packages out there. Just curious to get you guys take and then curious if you’d be an active buyer in this market?

Paul Rady

Analyst

Well, there are good packages, good properties, don’t think you’ll see us buying a company, that’s really not what we do. We’ve added so much value just by base leasing. So if there are some leasehold that would appeal to us we might approach it that way.

Holly Stewart

Analyst

Thank you, guys.

Paul Rady

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from Brian Gamble of Simmons & Company. Please go ahead.

Brian Gamble

Analyst

Good morning, guys and good quarter.

Paul Rady

Analyst

Good morning.

Brian Gamble

Analyst

Morning. First wanted to chat on the production, you mentioned the production growth for next year, wanted to focus a little bit more short-term, if I may, to start, I think last quarter, you talked about the expectation in Q3 might be a slight down tick and then we see an uptick in Q4, obviously, outperform that in Q3, anything that shifted? Should we still expect Q4 to be a slight uptick in the production arena?

Paul Rady

Analyst

Yeah. I think, Q4 will be pretty flattish. We accelerated some completions in the Utica just due to great performance out in the field. I think that’s probably would drove the outperformance in the third quarter. So I would not expect to being uptick in the fourth -- in the overall net basis.

Brian Gamble

Analyst

Great. And then when you talk about the production growth, appreciate the clarification and its also 1.4 guidance. When you mentioned the ducts are part of that plan and I think, maybe the moderation of some of those duct as we go through the year, exactly kind of walk me through that? What is based into that? How many ducts to get to that 25% to 30% are you expecting to drawdown during 2016 and maybe if you wanted to touch on the total CapEx level that you’re forecasting with the net growth range that might be helpful, as well as any true-ups on that from the last time you talked about it?

Paul Rady

Analyst

Yeah. As part of that, you’ll see 50 to 60 uncompleted wells get completed starting around year end most likely. We’re seeing continued improvement in frac cost from the cost that we’re seeing out there and so we’re looking to started on that, I don’t think we’ll do them all in a couple of months, we’ll spread them out throughout the year. So I think you’d see us running probably eight or nine frac crews throughout the year, next year to work that duct portfolio if you will. And then as far as capital, it’s been a moving target to our favor, of course, which has been terrific and I think relative to what we said a few months ago in the last quarterly call. We’d expect to see our drilling completion capital sort of inline with this year’s actual numbers. So we don’t expect to see an increase there and maybe a slight decrease in order to hit that kind of production growth for next year.

Brian Gamble

Analyst

Great. And then on the NGL side, you seem to have at least some moderation in the down tick that we’ve seen throughout 2015 from a realization standpoint? Any reason to believe that we’re getting any better as we walk into the winter, I mean, theoretically, seasonally, we should, anything out of the ordinary that helps that as we walk into 2016?

Paul Rady

Analyst

No. Not out of the ordinary. I think you’d say, well as the near-term drilling subsides a little bit in Appalachia that will back-off and the volume and the volume increase. There is a little bit of export that will now go on with Mariner I with ranges volumes to export out of market, so in a sense draining the surplus a little bit. So between a little bit decline in drilling and a little bit of export can the Northeast markets improved, it’s possible. I think the next year to drop really is at the end of ‘16 when Mariner II opens, because that has a lot of export capacity possibilities. As the market knows, as many know, we have firm capacity on Mariner East II of 50,000 barrels a day and move propane, butane through that, as well as 11,500 of barrels a day of ethane. But there are possibilities for overflow and moving more volumes out of Marcus Hook through Mariner II for us and for other parties and so will that help draining the bath tub and the surplus beginning in really in ‘17. That would be when that happens because Mariner East isn’t expected to come on until end of ‘16. But that’s where we’re looking for some short intermediate term improvements in prices on the liquids.

Brian Gamble

Analyst

Great. Appreciate that Paul.

Paul Rady

Analyst

Sure.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from Kevin MacCurdy of Heikkinen Energy Advisors. Please go ahead.

Kevin MacCurdy

Analyst

Can you guys detail how much new firm transportation and firm sales you have coming online in 2016 and what kind of flexibility you have in filling or potentially releasing any of that incremental capacity?

Paul Rady

Analyst

Yeah. Let us pullout some schedules here, Kevin. Just to start out while we’re dating that up, of course, you always have flexibility in releasing capacity. There are bulletin boards for each pipe and so you can release for any period of time you want and you put it on the bulletin board and people did on it and of course, it’s either they’re bidding a discount to your cost or a premium depending on the spreads across the pipe and how scarce it is and so that’s certainly possible. I think another thing I want to add is, if looking into rear view mirror, yes, we’ve been paying for open space on some pipe, the pipe grows and our production grows, of course. But there are some pretty good examples, for example, our Rex capacity where we have been paying the past number of months on open capacity on Rex, buying other peoples gas to offset the transport. But by first quarter, second quarter of this year, all of our Rex capacity for example is full and we’ll be out there looking at the other opportunities to flow gas out of the Utica. So it’s a moving target that what is open space today fills up pretty rapidly with the pace of growth that we have on, let see. So as to a chart and how much firm capacity we have. Today we have 2.6 Bcf a day and through the course of cal 16, we’ll move up to about 3.8 Bcf a day. And quite a bit of that capacity is precious, in that we can buy distressed gas in the TETCO M2 pool and the Dominion South pool and move it through some of that transport and pick up a pretty good spread. So there’s a very active program here at Antero to -- certainly to fill our unused capacity, and to trade through it and buy third-party gas and do everything that we can to offset our transportation costs.

Glen Warren

Analyst

And you can see that chart on page 34 on the website presentation for AR. You can see the page Paul is referring to.

Kevin MacCurdy

Analyst

Great. Thanks for the clarity.

Glen Warren

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instruction] The next question comes from Dan Guffey of Stifel. Please go ahead.

Dan Guffey

Analyst

Good morning, guys. Congratulations on a good quarter. Just looking, you guys highlighted drilling your driest Ohio Utica well. Was that in your 40,000 net acres that’s the dry gas portion or was that just west of that mark? And then I guess, is that 40,000 dry portion of Ohio Utica in your 2016 plans or is infrastructure still not built out enough, as you move to the East?

Paul Rady

Analyst

I’d have to look at the map, but I am going to say that Laura Ditch is right on the border. It’s roughly in the 40,000 acres of dry gas that -- yes, it’s borderline. It’s at around 1,130 BTU. We are looking at a map here, Dan. So it’s on the up-dip edge of the 40,000 acres of dry-ish gas that doesn’t need processing. And so yeah, infrastructure is coming along. We will be able to produce a lot of those dry pads. But as I just mentioned in the answer to that last question, we will be filling up our Rex by first or second quarter with completing the wells that are underway right now. And so the infrastructure will lead into other people’s transport, as well as TETCO. And so that’s why the emphasis will be, move over and drill a little bit more Marcellus during cal 16.

Dan Guffey

Analyst

Okay. Thanks for the color. And then can you talk about maybe your appetite and if you’ve had any discussions regarding the Pennsylvania acreage swap and/or sale?

Paul Rady

Analyst

Our appetite? It’s extremely good acreage and there’s drilling all around this. Rice, EQT, others surround us. So it is very good. We have just a couple of wells that we drilled years ago there before we shifted our focus to West Virginia. They had very high -- the metrics we look at of course are EURs and Bcf per thousands. We did those completions in the old style, 400-foot plus stage lengths and still had very good wells. So know it’s highly prospective, well blocked up, good term on it. So would we trade or sell? It’s possible. But there is no movement underway right now to do that. It’s in good shape and we are patient. So we may get to drilling it as the regional gathering lines come in. There’s a way to actually move that gas south to the same destination that our West Virginia Marcellus gas goes. So definitely has value there that can come to the better markets beginning in a month.

Dan Guffey

Analyst

Okay. And I guess last one for me. And I think I know the answer, but I’ll ask anyway. You guys -- obviously you have highlighted you guys have one of most comprehensive hedge books in the entire industry. And I know this would go against any kind of business philosophy that you guys have, but is there a price where you would monetize any portion of your hedges, particularly when you look out to 2020, 2021, or any of those later dated hedges that are extremely valuable at the current strip?

Paul Rady

Analyst

Yeah, I think we would say, never say never, but I think we will probably give you the answer you’re expecting Dan which is, we just haven’t done that before. We just keep it simple. We’ve only done straight swaps, no collars or three-ways or anything, and we’ve left those in place. When you look back in history, those that have yanked their insurance policy so to speak, when they yanked their hedges, sometimes they -- mostly they live to regret it. So I think we are probably going to keep them in place

Glen Warren

Analyst

Yes, I think a lot of analysts incorrectly look at our hedge book as just a financial position, a trading position. We’ve never taken any hedges off. That’s why I made the comment earlier that you should really look at our hedges as a forward sale. I mean, we are just selling our production forward where we like the prices and we tend to go out further than most other producers. And we’re reaping the benefits of that today in a down market.

Dan Guffey

Analyst

Thanks for all the detail, guys. And congrats on a good quarter.

Glen Warren

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from Jeoffrey Lambujon of Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Company. Please go ahead.

Jeoffrey Lambujon

Analyst

Good morning. I appreciate the color on the optionality of fill volumes, or I guess excess capacity next year with third party gas. Is there any more detail you can provide in terms of much excess capacity, I guess mitigation you are targeting next year? I know it’s price dependant, but any advantage or thoughts around expectations would be helpful.

Paul Rady

Analyst

Yeah, we will guide to that when we come out with guidance later, but I don’t think we are really prepared to give you guidance on that today, but we think it’s all very manageable.

Jeoffrey Lambujon

Analyst

All right. Thank you.

Paul Rady

Analyst

Thanks.

Operator

Operator

This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Kennedy for closing remarks.

Michael Kennedy

Analyst

Thank you for participating on our call today. If you have any further questions, please feel free to reach out to us. Thanks again.