James D. Bennett
Analyst · Craig Shere with Tuohy Brothers
Thank you, Tom. Before I run through a summary of our financial results, let me comment on our Dynamic acquisition. In terms of the fit and the reasoning for the deal, as Tom discussed, we were able to acquire Dynamic at a very reasonable price of $50,000 per flowing barrel equivalent per day, 3.4x EBITDA and 67% of proved PV-10. While we continue to view the Mississippian and Permian as our core drilling assets, in the case of Dynamic, if we can buy offshore cash flow and production for the low multiples that we are seeing, this represents a compelling opportunity for us to add inexpensive production and EBITDA, improve our leverage and de-risk our balance sheet, all of which remain consistent with our 3-year plan. Turning to the fourth quarter. As you can see in the earnings release, adjusted net income was $9.1 million or $0.02 per diluted share. Adjusted EBITDA was $175 million and operating cash flow was $153 million or $0.31 per diluted share. Fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA is up 34% over the comparable 2010 period, driven by a 26% growth in oil production and higher realized oil prices, somewhat offset by a decline in gas production. For the full year 2011, adjusted EBITDA was $654 million and operating cash flow was $535 million or $1.08 per diluted share. Note that operating cash flow does not deduct the distributions to the public unitholders of our 2 Royalty Trusts, which totaled $57 million in 2011. On per unit measures, LOEs continued to improve the last 2 quarters. And for the full year, LOE of $13.81 per BOE and production taxes of $1.97 per BOE were both below the low end of 2011 guidance ranges. DD&A of $13.97 per BOE was right within guidance and G&A of $6.35 per BOE fell just outside the high end of guidance range, primarily due to headcount increases to handle the continued growth in the Mississippian. Capital expenditures, excluding acquisitions, were $500 million for the quarter and $1.8 billion for the year, right in line with guidance. We continue our capital raising efforts. And in January, we closed the $1 billion Mississippian joint venture with our partner, Repsol, receiving $250 million cash on January 5 and the remaining $750 million in the form of a drilling carry, which we expect to utilize over the next 3 years. Also, in January, we filed a registration statement for the IPO of our third Royalty Trust. The registration statement is under review by the SEC and therefore, we can't further comment on the offering on this call except to say that SandRidge expects to realize proceeds from the offering early in the second quarter. As we disclosed in our Form 4 filing on Wednesday, earlier this week, we sold 1.58 million of our common units of SandRidge Mississippian Trust I SDT for proceeds of approximately $52 million, which is not yet reflected in our current $200 million cash balance. We still hold under 2.2 million SDT common units and 4.9 million SandRidge Permian Trust common units, with a combined market value of approximately $200 million. Finally, in terms of potential sources of capital, we can also JV up to an additional 250,000 acreage in the Mississippian, if we choose. Regarding our liquidity and balance sheet. At December 31, we had a cash balance of just over $200 million, $2.8 billion in senior notes and no amount drawn on our credit facility, giving us a net debt balance of $2.6 billion. This represents a reduction in net debt of $300 million from year-end 2010 and puts our year-end net debt to adjusted EBITDA at 4x and pro forma the impact of Dynamic, 3.3x. Our liquidity position remains excellent. As of February 21, we had a cash balance of $205 million and no borrowings under our credit facility, giving us liquidity of approximately $1 billion. Our $790 million credit facility matures in 2014. However, sometime in the second quarter this year, we intend to enter into a new revolving credit facility and will likely increase the borrowing base from its current level. In terms of our borrowing maturities, we have only one $350 million note maturing in the next 4 years. So tying together an improved balance sheet from continued successful capital raising. $1 billion of liquidity, a deep inventory of high return oil drilling opportunities in the Mississippian and the Permian plus the Dynamic acquisition, we believe the company is in the best position it has been in since its inception in 2006. We have in place now a 2012 capital plan inclusive of Dynamic, $1.85 billion, which we can fully fund with a combination of cash flow from operations, proceeds from the Repsol joint venture and our $1 billion of current liquidity. Also with our credit measures continuing to improve, we will be in a position to utilize some amount of long-term debt beyond 2012 to fund our growth. In yesterday's press release, we published updated 2012 guidance. This guidance represents expectations for SandRidge stand-alone for the January through April period and assumes a closing of the Dynamic acquisition on April 30. Giving effect to the Dynamic acquisition contribution from May 1 forward. While we don't give quarterly guidance, with the Dynamic acquisition not closing until early second quarter, for the first quarter of 2012, I would point you to the SandRidge guidance ranges that we published in our last 2 investor presentations as a good representation of expected Q1 results. In terms of production, we are maintaining SandRidge stand-alone guidance of 26.5 million barrels of oil equivalent, broken down as 15.4 million barrels of oil and 66.6 Bcf of gas. We are guiding Dynamic to contribute production of 5.8 million barrels of oil equivalent for the May to December period. This represents 25,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day of production, which we then risk down slightly during hurricane season to get an average production of 23,700 barrels of oil equivalent per day for the 8-month period in 2012. Combined oil differentials improved from $13 to $9 due to the higher realized LLS pricings for Dynamic's oil production, which typically trades at a 10% to 20% premium to WTI. In terms of costs, we've updated lifting costs to account for the higher operating costs and insurance expense of operating offshore and the fixed priced nature of some of our gathering contracts in the WTO. Production taxes per BOE declined due to the low overall tax burden on the Dynamic assets. We have broken out plugging and abandonment cash cost of $35 million, and we'll be reporting these separately from capital expenditures. Regarding CapEx, we increased SandRidge stand-alone land CapEx by $50 million to reflect future additions of acreage in some of the proven areas of the Mississippian, bringing SandRidge stand-alone CapEx to $1.65 billion for the year. For the Dynamic assets, we are projecting a CapEx budget of approximately $200 million for the May through December period. Beyond 2012, we do expect their annual offshore CapEx to stay flat at $200 million. But for 2012, Dynamic's budget is heavily weighted for the back 2/3 of the year. In total, this brings the 2012 capital expenditure budget to $1.85 billion. We are entering 2012 with a very strong oil hedge position. For calendar year '12, we have approximately 14 million barrels of oil hedged at $99.82 per barrel, and Dynamic has approximately 1 million barrel swap at just over $91 a barrel. Combined, this represents approximately 82% of estimated 2012 oil production hedged at approximately $99 per barrel. The details of SandRidge commodity hedge positions are outlined in the earnings release and Dynamic's hedges, the majority of which we anticipate assuming at closing are disclosed in its public filings. This concludes management's prepared remarks. I would like to ask the operator to open the line for questions.