Operator
Operator
Good day, and welcome to the Antero Resources Second Quarter 2016 Earnings Conference Call and Webcast. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Please note also that this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Michael Kennedy, Senior Vice President of Finance and Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir. Michael N. Kennedy - Senior Vice President, Finance & Chief Financial Officer: Thank you for joining us for Antero's second quarter 2016 investor conference call. We'll spend a few minutes going through the financial and operational highlights, and then we'll open it up for Q&A. I'd also like to direct you to the homepage of our website at www.anteroresources.com where we've provided a separate earnings call presentation that will be reviewed during today's call. Before we start our comments, I would 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'll now turn the call over to Glen. Glen C. Warren - President, CFO, Secretary & Director: Thank you, Mike, and thank you to everyone for listening to our call today. In my comments, I'm going to highlight our second quarter financial results including price realizations and EBITDAX margins, touch on the attractive upside we see in an improving commodity price environment and discuss the recent equity offering we completed during the quarter. Paul will then provide a brief update on the recently announced acreage acquisition in the core of the Marcellus, highlight the operational momentum we've maintained through the downturn leading to significant drilling efficiencies and cost improvements and provide additional color around improvement in recoveries that we're achieving. Let's begin with some of the key highlights from the quarter. As we had another fantastic quarter both operationally and financially, production averaged a record 1.762 Bcfe/d for the quarter including over 75,000 barrels a day of liquids. This production record was achieved despite downtime at the Sherwood Processing Plant in West Virginia in late June, which resulted in 7.3 Bcfe of deferred production, averaging approximately 80 million cubic feet a day equivalent of production for the quarter. The downtime was caused by an NGL pipeline slip that was repaired by the end of the quarter. The liquids production during the quarter include 17,000 barrels a day of ethane, which represented a 50% increase compared to the prior quarter, driven by an improvement in the ethane frac spread. Moving on to realized pricing during the quarter. We realized an all-in price of $3.95 per Mcfe including NGLs, oil and hedges, despite the lowest average NYMEX natural gas price recorded for any quarter since 1999 at $1.95 per Mcf. As you can see on slide two of our earnings call presentation titled 2Q 2016 price realizations and EBITDAX margin, we realized an average pre-hedge natural gas price of $1.93 per Mcf and after-hedge price of $4.31 per Mcf. As you can see on the top half of the page, our pre-hedge gas price realization of $1.93 per Mcf was only $0.02 less than the average NYMEX price and $0.35 higher than our next closest peer for the quarter. Our after-hedge gas price realization of $4.31 per Mcf was a $2.36 premium to the average NYMEX price and $1.79 per Mcf higher than our next closest peer for the period, further demonstrating the significant value of our hedge book. On the liquids front, we realized an unhedged C3+ NGL price of $17.08 per barrel or 38% of NYMEX WTI and an ethane price of $8.36 per barrel or $0.20 per gallon. Directing you to the bottom half of the page, you can see how these superior price realizations and hedge gains translate into our peer leading EBITDAX margin. At $1.86 per Mcfe, our EBITDAX margin is $0.81 per Mcfe higher than the next closest peer. During the quarter, we generated $332 million in consolidated EBITDAX. As you can see on slide number three titled highest EBITDAX and margins among peers, despite a decline in NYMEX gas and oil prices of 26% and 21% over the last year respectively, our EBITDAX increased by 24% year-over-year, resulting in $100 million more cash flow than our next closest peer. Detailed on the bottom half of the slide, this resulted in the fifth consecutive quarter in which Antero led the peer group in EBITDAX margins. The ability to consistently generate top tier EBITDAX margins is a function of our differentiated strategy of targeting the best netback pricing by moving our gas production outside of the basin with optimal takeaway, focusing on liquids value uplift and hedging our production, often years in advance. Antero's differentiated strategy offers investors in Appalachia a fairly stark choice. You can either invest in an active core producer like AR, who has already sold over 80% of its forecast production through 2019 at $0.75 per Mcfe above the current strip prices, or you can invest in producers who are partially hedged at lower prices with lower activity levels, less core drilling inventory and take your chances with prices and basis. The next slide really quantifies the strategy. Directing you to slide number four, titled incremental costs drive price realizations, the blue outlined callout box demonstrates how our firm transportation expense of $0.40 per Mcfe enables us to sell our gas at an expected premium realization of $0.14 per Mcf compared to the strip pricing through 2018. Said another way, if you deducted the firm transport costs of $0.40 per Mcfe from our expected realized pricing, we would still achieve a netback of $2.83, which is $0.52 per Mcf higher than the Dominion South index that many of our peers are selling their gas at today. Many peers, of course, also sell at TETCO, which is very comparable pricing to Dominion South. Now moving on to the liquids uptick. We pay approximately $0.60 per Mcfe in all-in processing fuel cost y-grade transport and fractionation costs. And at $52 to $70 WTI range, this translates into $0.71 to $1.18 per Mcfe uplift in price realizations. While the base cost structure may be higher than that of a dry gas-focused producer, we see more upside on the liquids over the medium and longer term and have positioned ourselves accordingly. Directing you to the right half of the slide, AR would realize all-in pre-hedge prices of $4.18 per Mcfe to $4.41 per Mcfe assuming $60 and $70 per barrel WTI prices respectively and that's right on top of the dark green bars. While this strategy of drilling liquids rich gas and locking in the most attractive takeaway in prices while incurring slightly higher cost may differ from many of our peers, the end result comes down to generating the highest margin per Mcfe of production, which we've consistently achieved and expect to continue moving forward. So, if you look at that cash margin, it's about $2, the difference between the total cash costs and that's a pre-hedge all-in price. And you get that for spending about $0.50 on the F&D side, so kind of a 4:1 ratio. Before moving on to discuss our upside in an improving commodity price environment, I wanted to touch briefly on net marketing expenses. During the quarter, we generated $91 million in net marketing revenue and $126 million in marketing expenses. We purchased and sold approximately 500 million cubic feet a day of third-party gas, utilizing excess capacity on the Tennessee Gas Pipeline and capturing an average spread of $0.40 per Mcf. Net marketing expense was ahead of internal expectations of $35 million or $0.22 per Mcfe. Looking forward to the remainder of the year, we are guiding to second half 2016 net marketing expenses of $0.10 per Mcfe to $0.15 per Mcfe. This significant reduction per Mcfe compared to the current quarterly results and a function of a previously announced third-party agreement that went into effect on July 1, 2016 and will continue until the Rover Pipeline is placed in service or December 31, 2018, whichever is later. The third party has the same responsibility for our stranded ANR Pipeline capacity and will pay the demand fees associated with that pipeline. Now moving on to our positioning in a commodity price rebound, particularly on the liquids pricing, I'll direct you to slide number five, titled Largest Core Liquids Rich Drilling Inventory. In the yellow highlighted box, you will notice that pro forma for the pending acreage acquisition, we control an estimated 39% of the NGL reserves in the liquids rich core of the Marcellus and Utica combined, which translates to about 420,000 net for liquids rich acres. In fact, we're currently running 58% of the rigs in the liquids rich core areas in all of Appalachia. A key part of our strategy is positioning ourselves for an NGL price recovery and we believe we're best positioned to capture this upside. Now looking at slide number six, titled NGL Growth and Ethane Optionality. We have guided to 47% NGL production growth in 2016, which is on top of our 117% (11:10) growth in NGL production in 2015. Through the first two quarters of the year, we're well on track to hit this guidance. The NGL production growth guidance assumes a net 10,000 barrels a day of ethane, but we have substantial ethane optionality as well. Assuming a full ethane recovery scenario today, we would be producing over 90,000 net barrels per day of ethane, which gives you a feel for ethane optionality. Before I turn it over to Paul, I'll briefly touch on the equity offering that we completed in June to fund the recently announced pending acreage acquisition and reduce debt. On the base offering, we sold 26.8 million shares of common stock for net proceeds of $753 million. Just recently, we also closed on 3 million additional shares as part of the overallotment option, generating an incremental $85 million. The combined $838 million of net proceeds will be used to fund the acreage acquisition and for repayment of borrowings under our revolver initially. The overall transaction was very well received due to the high quality nature of the acreage as we priced at the tightest spread for any E&P offering over $500 million since the commodity price downturn began in late 2014. With that, I will turn it over to Paul for his comments. Paul M. Rady - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Thanks, Glen. In my comments today, I will discuss the significant benefits of maintaining operational momentum through this downturn, provide a brief update on the recent Marcellus core acreage acquisition and finish with the review of our current well economics, which have improved tremendously through continued reductions in drilling costs, efficiencies, higher EURs and improved commodity pricing. As we've mentioned in the past, because of our strong hedge and firm transport book, we've been in a unique position to be able to maintain a significant level of development activity throughout this commodity price downturn. This has enabled us to continue moving up the learning curve as it relates to drilling efficiencies and overall well recoveries. While we cannot predict the future of commodity prices, we can say with conviction that we are operationally a stronger company today than we were before the downturn. As I'll touch on in more detail in my remarks, we have reduced well costs by over 30% over the last 18 months and have increased overall recoveries by 20% or more over that same timeframe. Additionally, our strong balance sheet and financial position throughout the downturn has enabled us to consolidate core acreage and continued a high grade and attractive inventory of highly economic locations. Lastly, as we continue through this commodity price uncertainty, I'll remind you that we are a 100% hedged on expected gas and propane production for the remainder of 2016 and 100% hedged on expected gas production in 2017 at prices that are more than $0.60 higher per Mcfe than the current strip pricing. Now, let me first provide you with an update of our pending core acreage acquisition and strategic rationale. I'll direct you to slide number seven, entitled acquisition update. As outlined on the top of the page, the tag along rights on the acquisition have been exercised adding an incremental 11,500 net acres and approximately 900 Bcf equivalent of unaudited Marcellus 3P reserves to the transaction. That brings the total acquired net acreage to 66,500 net acres, the total 3P reserves to 5.0 Tcf equivalent and total net production of 16 million cubic feet equivalent per day, all for a purchase price of $546 million. Overall, this acquisition will impact 1,060 gross undeveloped locations through either newly added locations, lateral extensions or increased working interests on existing and future wells. What makes this acquisition even more exciting to Antero among the other aspects listed on the slide is the attractive liquids rich well economics associated with the acreage that's consistent with recent Antero well results. With the application of our recent advanced completion techniques, we expect the acquired high-graded core acreage to yield similar consistent results. Pro forma for the announced acquisition, we estimate that we control over 50% of the Southern Rich Gas core, which is outlined in red on the map. This speaks to the substantial liquids rich footprint we continue to build in the southwest Marcellus to drive long-term value creation for our shareholders. Now let's move on to the operational efficiencies and cost reductions that we've achieved over the last 18 months. On slide number eight, entitled proven track record of well cost reductions, AR has reduced its well cost by 34% in the Marcellus over the last 18 months to $0.9 million per 1,000 feet of lateral. The bottom half of the slide illustrates that we've seen similar success in the Utica with well cost totaling $1.0 million per 1,000 feet of lateral or a 33% decline over the last 18 months. Not only did second quarter 2016 well cost represent significant reductions compared to 2014, but Marcellus and Utica well costs represented a 17% and 13% reduction respectively compared to well costs assumed in our year-end 2015 reserves. The reduction in well cost has been a function of reduced service costs, but more importantly, sustainable operational efficiencies. From a service cost perspective, we are really in the driver seat in terms of sustaining the cost reductions, a direct result of being the most active operator with seven rigs and five completion crews running. To further touch on the operational efficiencies, I'll refer you to slide number nine entitled, continuous operating improvement. During the quarter, we set another company record drilling 7,274 feet of lateral in a 24-hour period while staying within a 10-foot zone. The more efficient drilling led to a reduction in spud to rig release drilling days in both the Marcellus and the Utica. In the Marcellus, drilling days have decreased by 48% from 29 days in 2014 to 15 days during the second quarter. In the Utica, drilling days have decreased by 45% from 29 days in 2014 to 16 days in the second quarter. Additionally, stages completed per day in the Marcellus increased by 22% from 3.2 stages per day in 2014 to 3.9 stages per day during the second quarter. In the Utica, stages completed per day increased from 3.2 stages per day in 2014 to 4.4 stages per day in the second quarter, a 38% increase. From a wellhead recovery standpoint, we continue to achieve encouraging results utilizing advanced completion techniques. To provide further clarity, I'll direct you to slide number 10 entitled, advanced completions drive higher EURs. As you can see on this slide, we've normalized 24 wells that have been placed on sales in 2016 and completed with at least 1,500 pounds in profit per foot to time zero. So, we've equalized all these wells to time zero, and those that have had at least a 9,000-foot lateral. We also included the 1.7 Bcf per 1,000 foot type curve used for reserved booking at year-end 2015 and a 2.0 Bcf per 1,000 foot type curve as well. The aggregated red production line is thus far exceeding the 2.0 Bcf per 1,000 type curve, which would represent a 33% increase compared to 2014 and an 18% increase relative to our 1.7 Bcf per 1,000 type curve. While we are still early in the evaluation process, the results are very encouraging. As it relates to well economics, as you'd expect, a 33% reduction in well costs and a 33% increase in EURs has a significant impact on returns and drives very attractive economics on AR's development program. To provide more color on this, I'll direct you to slide number 11 entitled Marcellus upside potential. On this slide, we've provided rates of return in the highly rich gas condensate and highly rich gas regimes of the Marcellus. These regimes represent the areas where we are active today and completing wells with the advanced completion techniques I just discussed. As detailed on the slide, if we are able to consistently develop to deliver the EURs 2.0 Bcf wellhead gas per 1,000 feet of lateral, this translates into rates of return of 77% in the highly rich gas condensate areas and 51% in the highly rich gas area, assuming June 30, 2016 strip pricing. While still very early stage, we have begun pilot testing even higher profit loads with sand volumes upwards of 1,750 pounds to 2,000 pounds per foot and water volumes of 40 barrels to 45 barrels per foot. We believe these higher profit loads have the potential for recoveries of upwards of 2.3 Bcf per 1,000, which would result in pre-tax rates of return of almost 100% in the highly rich gas condensate regime and 66% in the highly rich gas regime. As a reminder, we have almost 2,000 locations in these two areas alone pro forma for the announced acreage acquisition. This provides us with tremendous confidence that we can generate substantial value creation for many years to come. In summary, we've made some of the biggest strides operationally in 2016 since we entered the play in 2008, and have further consolidated the liquids area of the Marcellus. Our business plan, which is focused on low unit cost development, best-in-class realized pricing, peer-leading margins and ongoing consolidation, continues to pay dividends for Antero. Looking ahead, Antero is uniquely positioned for long-term success and will continue to thrive as commodity prices recover. In short, the outlook remains extremely bright for Antero. With that, operator, let's open it up for questions.