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Chord Energy Corporation (CHRD)

Q1 2020 Earnings Call· Mon, May 18, 2020

$140.16

+1.79%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning. My name is Brandon and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I'd like to welcome everyone to the First Quarter 2020 Earnings Release and Operations Update for Oasis Petroleum. Today, Oasis’ management will discuss first quarter 2020 results in the current environment. Please note this event is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Michael Lou, Oasis Petroleum's CFO to begin the conference. Thank you. You may now begin your conference.

Michael Lou

Operator

Thank you, Brandon. Good morning, everyone. Today, we are reporting our first quarter 2020 financial and operational results. We are delighted to have you on our call. I am joined today by Tommy Nusz and Taylor Reid. Please be advised that our remarks on both Oasis Petroleum and Oasis Midstream Partners include statements that we believe to be forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to be materially different from those currently disclosed in our earnings releases and conference calls. Those risks include among others, matters that we have described in our earnings releases, as well as in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission included our Annual Report on Form 10-K and our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. We disclaim any obligation to update these forward-looking statements. During this conference call, we will make reference to non-GAAP measures and reconciliations to the applicable GAAP measures can be found in our earnings releases and on our websites. We will not be hosting a Q&A session during today’s call, but our team will be available after our call as needed. With that, I'll turn the call over to Tommy.

Tommy Nusz

Analyst

Thanks, Michael. Good morning and thanks for joining our call. As we noted in our press release today, we are now living in unprecedented times as both our lives and our business have been greatly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. We have seen the historic destruction of global oil demand, which was compounded by a sudden oversupply of oil. While this convergence of market forces is unlike anything we have ever seen, our team knows that we have to be prepared to be able to power down activity in an orderly manner as we did in 2015 as we dropped capital activity, held volumes flat and lived within cash flow – with that cash flow protected by hedges, we put on years prior. But now the macro environment calls for even more drastic and immediate counter measures. We are just into this environment while striving to keep our employees, contractors and communities safe and healthy. We’ve been rapidly transitioning our business to protect our strong asset base. All that being said, we were able to deliver a strong first quarter where we were above the midpoint of our production guidance and spent well below our CapEx projections. We have also worked together to reduce our capital spending plan for the remainder of 2020 to put us in a position to be free cash flow positive assuming strip pricing and the support of our strong hedge position. Before turning the call over to Taylor, I wanted to provide a few high-level reflections on our performance. First, the Williston remains our cornerstone asset and we have seen capital efficiency improve significantly over the past year as we optimized development programs and lowered operating and capital cost. Second, in the Delaware, we continued to improve drilling and completion efficiencies, the team has done…

Taylor Reid

Analyst

I echo Tommy’s comments on our priorities here at Oasis and believe our value system has positively shaped the way the Oasis team has reacted to this environment. Operationally, drilling efficiencies and overall operations are improving across both basins. As the environment continues to evolve, the team keeps looking for ways to drive capital productivity and improve returns, while retaining asset value for a better pricing environment. In the Williston, we completed 18 wells and brought six of those wells online. Despite winter weather, well costs were lower than expected, driven by strong cycle times and frac efficiency. This helped Oasis trend below expected Q1 spending levels. The team continues to evaluate and improve well and DSU design with the goal of lowering cost and enhancing capital productivity when we take up activity in the future. We delivered record cycle times in the Delaware, allowing us to get well zone quicker than expected. Our last 2-mile lateral wells were drilled in the 25-day range, which compares to the low-to-mid 30s a year ago. Through improvements in well design and optimized completions, we’ve made significant progress reducing well cost, coming in at $8.3 million, which is a couple of hundred thousand below our target for a four-well pad. While activity is being is being deferred, we would expect continued progress in both well design and pricing to push well cost to around $7 million when we restart the program. We made the move through the development last year and our last three projects have been full DSU drill outs in the Bone Springs and Wolfcamp Bay. Well performance has been encouraging, and this trend is a little above our planning expectations, which gives us high confidence in the productivity of our Delaware Basin asset going forward. We began the year running…

Michael Lou

Operator

Thanks, Taylor. The Oasis operations team continued to execute well. It’s a volatile market, but the team is certainly doing everything in its power to reduce cost and is protecting asset value by deferring activity until conditions normalize. We now expect E&P and other CapEx to be approximately 50% to 60% below our original budget of $575 million to $595 million. And Midstream is down by 65% to 75%. We are temporarily suspending volume guidance, given the current environment. We recently completed our Spring Bank redetermination. Our total borrowing base and elected commitments were reduced to $625 million on April 24. As of March 31, we had $522 million drawn on the Oasis facility and $19 million of LCs. We had $110 million of cash net to Oasis, giving us pro forma liquidity after adjusting for the new borrowing base of $194 million. With our updated capital program, we expect to begin to pay down the revolver in the second half of 2020. During the first quarter, we reduced the total principal of our senior unsecured notes by $157million during the quarter, taking the balance to $1.826 billion as of March 31, 2020. Separately, Oasis took an impairment charge this quarter, largely based on the sharp decline in prices seen from year end to March 31. Oasis has never taken a sizable proved impairment charge in prior reporting periods, but this quarter’s charge is appropriate based on market pricing. More details can be found in our press release and in our 10-Q. Oasis continues to do a good job managing LOE and minimizing downtime. LOE averaged $6.83 per BOE for the first quarter, well below expectations. LOE and GM&T are more difficult to specifically forecast with various levels of shut-ins. But the team is attempting to minimize operating cost, such…

Tommy Nusz

Analyst

Thanks, Michael. In closing, I’ve seen many cycles in my career. Each one is different and this one certainly has its uniqueness to it. While I don’t have a crystal ball to predict what the next six to twelve months is going to look like, one thing I am hopeful for is that the world begins to heal itself and there will be an increasing recognition and appreciation for affordable, reliable and sustainable energy. Oasis continues to leverage technology and management practices to improve our cost structure and efficiency, strengthen our already leading Greenhouse gas emissions profile, and manage our environmental footprint. I would encourage you to check out our website for more details on Oasis’ sustainability initiatives. I would like to recognize the extraordinary effort of our entire organization, as well as those around us providing support to what they have done maintain business continuity in a very challenging environment over the last two months is truly amazing. Thanks again for joining our call.

Operator

Operator

The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect. End of Q&A: