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CNX Resources Corporation (CNX)

Q2 2018 Earnings Call· Thu, Aug 2, 2018

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning and welcome to the CNX Resources Second Quarter 2018 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Tyler Lewis, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Tyler Lewis - CNX Resources Corp.

Management

Thanks, Andrew, and good morning, everybody. Welcome to CNX's second quarter conference call. We have in the room today Nick DeIuliis, our President and CEO; Don Rush, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; and Tim Dugan, our Chief Operating Officer. Today, we will be discussing our second quarter results, and we posted an updated slide presentation to our website. To remind everyone, CNX consolidate its results, which includes 100% of the results from CNX, CNX Gathering LLC and CNX Midstream Partners LP on a consolidated basis. Earlier this morning, CNX Midstream Partners, ticker CNXM, issued a separate press release. And as a reminder, they will have an earnings call at 11:00 AM Eastern today, which will require us to end our call no later than 10:50 AM. The dial-in number CNXM call is 1-888-349-0097. As a reminder, any forward-looking statements we make or comments about future expectations are subject to business risks, which we've laid out for you in our press release today as well as in our previous Securities and Exchange Commission filings. We will begin our call today with prepared remarks by Nick, followed by Don and then Tim, and then we will open up the call for Q&A. With that, let me turn the call over to you, Nick.

Nicholas J. DeIuliis - CNX Resources Corp.

Management

Thanks, Tyler. Good morning, everybody. I want to jump right in and review some of the highlights of the quarter that we've summarized on slide 3 of our presentation. We recently announced an agreement to sell our Ohio Utica acres associated with our joint venture with Hess for approximately $400 million net to us. Once closed, this transaction will bring our 2018 total asset sale proceeds to over $750 million. The sale is another example of an intense focus on capital allocation, and we took an asset with no planned future activity, and we pulled forward that value. Even though these assets are good, they couldn't compete with the higher economic opportunities that we've got within our portfolio. Also in the quarter, we repurchased $300 million of our 8% 2023 notes using our credit facility, which results in a nice decrease in our future interest expense and a corresponding boost to our future cash flows. In addition to repurchasing our notes, we've also continued to opportunistically and consistently buy back our shares. I'll have more to say on that in a minute. You shift over to production, as we guided to last quarter, we expected a decline in the second quarter compared to our first quarter. That's exactly what happened. We turned in line only three wells. Plus, this was the first quarter with our shallow oil and gas assets not in our production mix since that transaction closed at the end of the first quarter. Tim Dugan is going to talk more about the cadence for the rest of the year as well as some of the exciting Utica results that we're seeing with the deep dry Utica delineation. We also had some financial guidance changes this quarter. We reaffirmed 2018 production, but we increased our 2018 EBITDAX guidance…

Donald W. Rush - CNX Resources Corp.

Management

Thanks, Nick, and good morning, everyone. I would like to start out by reviewing our quarterly results, which are highlighted on slide 6. In the second quarter, we had adjusted net income attributable to CNX shareholders of $42 million or $0.19 per diluted share and adjusted EBITDAX attributable to CNX shareholders of approximately $204 million, an outstanding 133% increase from the year earlier quarter. And as we have been saying for quite a while now, this rapid EBITDAX growth is driving our leverage ratio down quickly. As Nick already mentioned, we're on track to be significantly lower than our 2.5 times target by year-end once we include the expected proceeds from the Ohio JV transaction. And to expand on that point for a minute, the way we think about use of proceeds from the Hess deal is that day one the proceeds are used to pay down our credit facility or other debt based on the way we have structured our balance sheet and our revolver usage, that in turn creates balance sheet capacity for us to use for the options Nick has already laid out. And if you remember, we were asked at our Analyst Day why we upsized our credit facility. And the reason is to have the balance sheet flexibility to approach decisions this way. So in summary, we did what we said we were going to do this year and we actually achieved it faster than we forecasted. And now that we are there and have incremental capacity, we have the optionality to use the capacity if and when we see fit. Next, I would like to point out that our press release, again, and earnings slides clearly provide the definitions for attributable and consolidated numbers to ensure proper understanding. You may recall that last quarter…

Timothy C. Dugan - CNX Resources Corp.

Management

Thanks, Don, and good morning, everyone. There's a few key topics that I'd like to discuss today. First, I'll walk through the results of the quarter and highlight some of the recent operational and strategic developments, and then we'll dig into the drivers of the capital guidance changes that Don mentioned and look at the production cadence for the rest of the year. And then lastly, I'll spend some time discussing the recent deep dry Utica results and some of the exciting things happening on that front. So, let's move to slide 10. Total production for the quarter was 122.6 Bcfe, which was a 33% increase year-over-year or a 5% decline compared to last quarter. Now, as we mentioned on the first quarter call, we were expecting a modest decline in the schedule as the schedule only contemplated three planned turned-in-lines for the second quarter. Utica volumes were up again by more than 200% over the same quarter in 2017, driven primarily by growth in the Monroe County, Ohio dry Utica. I'll discuss the production cadence for the last two quarters of the year shortly. And as Don just mentioned in his remarks, total cash production costs in the quarter were at $1.09 per Mcfe or down $0.13 year-over-year. Now, let's take a minute and look at the Virginia Coalbed Methane asset, which we don't talk about much, but recently there's some pretty exciting things happening down there. In the second quarter, operating costs were down 10% year-over-year as a renewed focus on efficiencies has paid dividends. A series of initiatives, including more data-driven analytics and a more effective use of manpower, has increased the rates of return for the entire asset. And as we said before, Virginia CBM is a significant contributor to EBITDAX generation and remains a valuable…

Tyler Lewis - CNX Resources Corp.

Management

Thanks, Tim. Andrew, can you please open the call up to Q&A at this time?

Operator

Operator

Yes, sir. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. The first question comes from Welles Fitzpatrick of SunTrust. Please go ahead.

Welles Fitzpatrick - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc.

Analyst

Hey. Good morning.

Nicholas J. DeIuliis - CNX Resources Corp.

Management

Good morning, Welles.

Donald W. Rush - CNX Resources Corp.

Management

Good morning.

Welles Fitzpatrick - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc.

Analyst

So, it seems like Richhill, those results, they back up the stacked development mode. I think as of last update, it was going to be moving in development mode sometime around year-end 2019. Can that be accelerated at all on these positive results?

Timothy C. Dugan - CNX Resources Corp.

Management

Well, there's always the opportunity to accelerate, but we've got a plan that we've laid out with the blending strategy, the sequencing of wells is important to be able to have the proper blending. So that's really built into our plan. And unless there's a significant change in the Marcellus development or the number of wells we're going to drill, there really would be no need to advance the Utica drilling.

Welles Fitzpatrick - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc.

Analyst

Okay. That makes sense. And then the water trucking that you guys mentioned hitting in the second quarter, obviously, you took up (25:44) CapEx for full year, but it seems like the majority of that hit was in 2Q. Is that something that's going to mitigate going forward because of the locations of wells or maybe you've got more pipe in or something like that? Can you just talk to how that develops through year-end?

Timothy C. Dugan - CNX Resources Corp.

Management

The water costs are really driven by the flowback volumes. The flowback volumes, we try to reuse as much water as possible. What we can't reuse, we have to dispose of and both of those options require trucking. So, whether we're disposing or reusing, it comes at a much higher cost than piping fresh water. So when we look at our frac water makeup, even though it costs a little higher, we live by our core values, and one of those is being a responsible corporate citizen and being environmentally compliant. So we try to reuse as much as possible. But that does come at a higher cost, so that drove our capital water costs up.

Welles Fitzpatrick - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc.

Analyst

Okay. Great. And then just one last one, if I could. The fuel costs on the rigs dropping about 30% to 80%. Can you contextualize that for me? I mean, is that $50,000 a well? Is that $100,000?

Timothy C. Dugan - CNX Resources Corp.

Management

I don't have the number right here, but it is significant. It goes from using a couple hundred Mcf per stage to getting – using a couple hundred Mcf per stage with this new frac fleet versus a couple thousand gallons of diesel per stage. And I don't have the exact number right in front of me, but I can get that for you after the call.

Welles Fitzpatrick - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc.

Analyst

Okay. Great. That's all I have. Congrats on the continued success there in Richhill.

Timothy C. Dugan - CNX Resources Corp.

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

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

Holly Barrett Stewart - Scotia Howard Weil

Analyst

Good morning, gentlemen.

Donald W. Rush - CNX Resources Corp.

Management

Good morning.

Holly Barrett Stewart - Scotia Howard Weil

Analyst

Maybe, Nick, just kind of starting out, talking about all the different capital allocation options, you've obviously been pretty active on the divestiture side. Are there any assets out there right now that maybe you could fill holes or you think would be strategic to kind of the current portfolio?

Nicholas J. DeIuliis - CNX Resources Corp.

Management

Holly, I think that as time sort of marches on, the opportunity or the asset packages that are out there are actually growing. Some of those would fit quite well with us. But I will also say, and I want to really emphasize this and it's consistent with our messaging the past year or so, those acquisition opportunities, they have to compete with the rate-of-return metrics that we see from our organic drill bit capital as well as our share buyback opportunities. And right now – based when you run all that math, right now, share buybacks and our rate of returns tied to our CapEx program are clearly far and above something that would be a bolt-on acquisition opportunity. So, I think the environment or the target-rich environment continues to grow. But right now, it can't compete, from our perspective, with the capital program that we've laid out along with our share buyback opportunities.

Holly Barrett Stewart - Scotia Howard Weil

Analyst

Okay. That's great. And that actually leads me into the next question. I mean, as where the stock sits today, is there any reason to think that you wouldn't finish this current authorization? And if so, are there plans to – or would there be plans to always just kind of have an authorization in place just in case you wanted to continue to take advantage of those opportunities?

Nicholas J. DeIuliis - CNX Resources Corp.

Management

There's sort of a short- and a long-term answer to that. In the short term, you saw that we extended out for a of couple months the current authorization. So, obviously, that implies an intention to continue to execute off of that. And in the longer term, back in March was the multiyear look that we laid out, the one side that showed how balance sheet capacity, cash flow capacity under that 2.5 times leverage ratio metric, coupled with all of our plans on capital, what that would do with respect to share count reduction over a number of years, which is sort of the bigger picture view. That's, I think, the current view that we're willing to put forth today. As to what we do, say, in January of 2019, that's more of a wait-and-see and we'll probably have much more to say about that on the third quarter call coming up after this quarter concludes.

Holly Barrett Stewart - Scotia Howard Weil

Analyst

That's perfect. And maybe one final one for me. I know NGLs aren't a big piece of the puzzle right now, but just curious – and maybe this is for Tim, I'm not sure. With ethane pricing kind of doing what it's doing, is there anything that CNX can do just in terms of maybe extracting more ethane or being able to kind of increase volume just due to price?

Timothy C. Dugan - CNX Resources Corp.

Management

Well, our ethane has – with some of the issues Mariner East had, we've had to reject some of our ethane this past quarter. But when you look at liquids prices in general, I think we have the opportunity to – with a flexible midstream system, we have the opportunity to move volumes to either a wet or dry system based on pricing, and we do that on a fairly regular basis as the market dictates. So when liquid prices are up, we can move more liquids to processing and take advantage of that and when they're not, we can push the blending more and more gas towards the dry outlets.

Holly Barrett Stewart - Scotia Howard Weil

Analyst

Okay. That's helpful. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from Joe Allman of Baird. Please go ahead. Joseph Allman - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc.: Thank you. Good morning and thanks for the good update. My first question is on constraints. Are there any constraints that you're experiencing in the field? I know you just mentioned Mariner East, which was a constraint. But one of your peers talked about the kind of tight local crude trucking takeaway market. So, if you'd just talk about any constraints you're experiencing, that'd be helpful.

Timothy C. Dugan - CNX Resources Corp.

Management

No, we don't have any constraints currently. When you look at our midstream system and our FT (31:54) and our takeaway points, we've got a fairly diversified portfolio from a transportation standpoint that allows us to move gas to several outlets. But on the trucking, trucking has been an industry-wide issue. We have not really seen an impact from it here. We're certainly aware of it. There is a shortage of drivers with – CDL drivers. But we started to recognize this last year and took some steps, particularly from a water hauling standpoint, to make sure we had the trucks that we needed locked up for a period of time. Joseph Allman - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc.: That's very helpful. And then on a different topic, could you just talk about the implications of the Richhill well performance? And also, talk about the Marchand well in the same context. I didn't see any update on that well also.

Timothy C. Dugan - CNX Resources Corp.

Management

Sure. The Richhill well, we're excited about it. It's producing above type curve. So, it really solidifies our belief in the blending strategy that we've put together for Southwest PA and those dry Utica volumes are going to be critical to developing the damp Marcellus gas, which is really going to give us an economic uplift and allow us to drill more of those wells sooner, and I'm referring to the damp Marcellus wells. On the Marchand, there's been some public data put out there, but I would take into consideration that some of that public data that's out there was during our testing. So the rates vary a little bit. That well is producing into an existing system, and when we turn that well in line, prior to turning it in line, we were able to find some additional capacity on existing infrastructure. And when we considered that additional capacity along with the timing of future delineation wells, the right decision at the time, from a capital allocation and NAV standpoint, was to defer the midstream expansion until we drill some future wells. And I know that raised – I'm sure raises some questions on well quality; are we going to drill more up there? And I will just tell you that we have more delineation wells planned in CPA North. And most likely, we will drill more wells off of the Marchand pad. So, that should tell you something about what we think of that area. Joseph Allman - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc.: That's great. And then my last question is on your electric frac effort, I find it really interesting and it really shows kind of the innovative spirit you have there at CNX. Is there any reason you could not use that for every frac job going forward if you really find that successful?

Timothy C. Dugan - CNX Resources Corp.

Management

There's no reason we couldn't grow into that. Yeah. We're already looking – as I mentioned, we're looking at ways that we can further take advantage of this technology and looking at what else we can do with it. It provides a lot of benefits not just from an efficiency standpoint, but from a safety and environmental compliance standpoint. It's a much smaller footprint. It's got a lot of pluses all around. So, we are looking at ways that we can further take advantage of it. Joseph Allman - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc.: Great. Well, thanks very much. Very helpful.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from Sameer Panjwani of Tudor, Pickering, Holt. Please go ahead. Sameer Panjwani - Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. Securities, Inc.: Hey, guys. Good morning.

Donald W. Rush - CNX Resources Corp.

Management

Good morning. Sameer Panjwani - Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. Securities, Inc.: On the new frac spread contract and the added rig, were you guys able to benefit from the softness in the Appalachian service market as some of your peers have talked about?

Timothy C. Dugan - CNX Resources Corp.

Management

I think whether we benefited from the softness of the market, I think we're able to find something here that we could take advantage of. We're excited about this because of what it brings to the table from a technology standpoint, but we're entering into it, I think really it's a win-win situation for both CNX and Evolution, and it helps us accomplish a lot of things we want to do. When we look at continuous improvement, when we look at a number of feet we can complete per day, this helps us move further down that road. Sameer Panjwani - Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. Securities, Inc.: Okay. Great. And then on the Utica well, sounds like everything is continuing to perform pretty well. And just given your focus on technology and data analytics, are you able to get a good sense of the drainage area from these early results to better inform your spacing design as you head toward stacked development?

Timothy C. Dugan - CNX Resources Corp.

Management

Yes, we do. That's one of the important things that comes out of the modeling and the data analytics. And as we've said before, the Utica is not as homogeneous as the Marcellus is. It's more compartmentalized. And we've got three or four significant compartments that we're focused on and we're continuing to learn more about each one. And they're not all at the same spot in their life cycle. So the spacing, completion designs, there will be variations from sub-area to sub-area, and that will be driven by the data set and the data analytics and what we're learning. Sameer Panjwani - Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. Securities, Inc.: Okay. So you guys still feel good with your spacing assumptions from the Analyst Day regarding the Utica?

Timothy C. Dugan - CNX Resources Corp.

Management

Yeah. We continue to update as we get more data in. We're always looking at our lateral spacing, our stage spacing, our landing points. We're looking at every aspect of those wells, really trying to move up that efficiency curve as quickly as we can, much faster than we were able to move up the curve on the Marcellus. So, we are still excited about the Utica, what it has to offer, and it is going to be a significant part of our growth plans going forward. Sameer Panjwani - Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. Securities, Inc.: Great. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And the last question today will come from Jane Trotsenko of Stifel. Please go ahead. Jane Trotsenko - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: Good morning. My first question is regarding natural gas price realizations. They were especially strong this quarter. Was there something unusual this quarter that you could point out to? And how sustainable are these strong natural gas price realizations in the future?

Donald W. Rush - CNX Resources Corp.

Management

So, yeah, I think there's lots of different things that are going into it, and I do think when you look at calendar year 2018 and just the supply/demand, storage fundamentals that exist, there's a lot of healthy fundamentals for gas prices. Q2 historically and Q3 have been a little bit different just based on in-basin basis differentials and components of that nature. We're much tighter now. If you look out in the next 12 to 18 months, all the pieces are in place from inventory levels to supply/demand balances to really allow, I think, healthy gas prices to continue throughout the rest of the year. Jane Trotsenko - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: Thanks. My second question, could you please talk about free cash flow generation and production growth tradeoff, and how flexible is your five-year plan to changes in commodity cycles, both positive changes and negative changes?

Nicholas J. DeIuliis - CNX Resources Corp.

Management

Well, as you know, Jane, capital allocation is front and center to what we spend our time on as a management team. That's driven by rate-of-return metrics. So we're solving in the end for NAV per share. Production growth and CapEx budgets are more of a result instead of a target. When you look at where the gas price deck is at, which is what we run when we calculate all our rate of returns, adjusting for hedge book, of course, when you look at the forwards for both basis and NYMEX, basically, the strategy that we laid out in March with respect to the five-year plans and what that looks like from EBITDA growth to capacity on our balance sheet at the 2.5 times leverage ratio and potential opportunities, like share count reduction, I think that story is very much intact today as we sit here in the middle of 2018. So, basically, when we look at the regulator, it's not so much free cash flow positive or negative. It's keeping a very secured balance sheet in the form of a 2.5 times leverage ratio and a robust hedge book. And then from that, where our capital allocation goes, whether it's debt reduction, share count reduction or capital program, that's driven by rate of returns and NAV per share. And looking out into the future, today versus March, we're still excited about the strategy we laid out for the five-year look that we provided. Jane Trotsenko - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: Awesome. My final question is on NGL pricing as it was also very strong in 2Q. I believe it was partially due to higher ethane rejection this quarter, which raised the value of your NGL barrel. How do you see NGL price evolve for near term?

Timothy C. Dugan - CNX Resources Corp.

Management

Well, we see the prices staying flat. But with some of the regional takeaways that's coming, high demand, we think there's some upside potential for NGL pricing. Jane Trotsenko - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: I see. Thank you so much.

Donald W. Rush - CNX Resources Corp.

Management

Welcome.

Operator

Operator

This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Tyler Lewis for any closing remarks.

Tyler Lewis - CNX Resources Corp.

Management

Thank you. All right. Thank you, everyone, for joining us. We look forward to speaking with you again next quarter. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.