Amplify Energy Corp (AMPY) 2024 Q1 法說會逐字稿

Good day, and welcome to Amplify Energy's first quarter 2024 investor conference call. Amplify's operating financial results were released yesterday after market close on May 8, 2024, and are available on Amplify's website at www.amplifyenergy.com.

During this conference call, all participants will be in a listen only mode. Today's call is being recorded. A replay of the call will be accessible until May 23, 2024 by dialing 8006541563 and then entering access code 59240315. I would now like to turn the conference over to Jim Frew, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Amplify Energy Corp. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and welcome to the Amplify Energy conference call to discuss operating and financial results for the first quarter of 2024. Before we get started, we would like to remind you that some of our remarks may contain forward looking statements which reflect management's current views of future events and are subject to various risks, uncertainties, expectations and assumptions.

Although management believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, it can give no assurances that such expectations will prove to be correct and undertakes no obligation and does not intend to update these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances occurring after this earnings call.

Please refer to our press release and SEC filings for a list of factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements made during this call. In addition, the unaudited financial information that will be highlighted here is derived from our internal financial books, records and reports. For additional detailed disclosure, we encourage you to read our Form 10-Q, which was filed yesterday afternoon.

Also non-GAAP financial measures may be disclosed during this call. Reconciliations of those measures to comparable GAAP measures may be found in our earnings release or on our website at www.amplifyenergy.com.

During the call, Martyn Willsher, Amplify's President and Chief Executive Officer, will review our first quarter performance and provide an update regarding our previously announced strategic initiatives. Next, Dan Furbee, Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, will provide an overview of first quarter operational performance. Following that, I will discuss first quarter financial results, provide an update on our balance sheet and liquidity and provide additional details on our hedge book. Finally, Martyn will conclude our prepared remarks with final thoughts before opening the call up for questions. With that, I will hand it over to Mart.

Thank you, Jim. Amplify had a strong first quarter of 2024. The company generated $24.9 million of adjusted EBITDA and $2.3 million of free cash flow during the quarter with both exceeding expectations. Due to our stronger-than-expected first quarter performance, combined with higher forecasted crude oil prices for the remainder of 2024, we have increased our annual guidance. You can find our updated guidance in our earnings release and investor presentation posted to our website last night.

With respect to the strategic initiatives highlighted on our previous calls, the Bairoil marketing process is progressing as expected. As a reminder, we are exploring a complete divestiture of the asset as well as considering alternative financing structures with the goal of maximizing shareholder value. A successful Bairoil monetization will accelerate our ability to reduce our debt outstanding and to evaluate return of capital options. We will provide an update regarding this process on our next call.

At Beta, we continue to make progress on our 2024 development program. Dan will provide more details in a moment, but we remain encouraged about the potential of the program, especially in light of current crude oil prices. Our initiatives at both Bairoil and Beta have the potential to demonstrate the significant upside of our assets that we believe is not currently fully valued.

With respect to other initiatives, Amplify has been working hard to put a more robust insurance program in place to enhance our overall risk mitigation plan. A key part of that program was replacing our prior surety bonds. As a result of taking this holistic approach to our insurance program, we were able to successfully restructure our sinking fund obligations, which will lower our annual payments by approximately $7 million per year.

Also of note, Amplify recently renegotiated its pre-existing iodine contracts in Oklahoma. We provide produced water to a third party for iodine extraction from the brine stream and are paid a royalty on the iodine produce. Starting in the second quarter, but effective as of January 1, 2024, Amplify will start realizing higher revenue from this partnership. Based on current iodine prices, we expect to generate an additional $2 million to $3 million per year in iodine royalties, which are captured as other revenue in our updated guidance.

In summary, we continue to focus on optimizing cash flow generation while simultaneously pursuing our strategic initiatives at Bairoil and Beta. We believe this plan will unlock additional value in Amplify's portfolio and deliver substantial benefits and long-term value to our shareholders.

With that, I'll hand it over to Dan.

Thank you, Martin. Total production for the first quarter averaged approximately 20,200 Boe per day, consisting of 43% oil, 18% NGLs and 39% natural gas. Oil volumes for the quarter were slightly higher than the previous quarter despite a planned shutdown for facility upgrades at Bairoil and plant shutdowns of Beta necessary for the continued electrification and emission reduction projects scheduled to be completed later this year.

The oil production increased versus prior quarter. Gas production was lower quarter over quarter, primarily due to third party interruption and higher shrinks as a result of processing more ethane. As a result, we have adjusted our production guidance accordingly. For the first quarter, lease operating expenses were $38 million. Gathering, processing and transportation costs were $4.8 million and production taxes were $4.9 million. In total, these costs were approximately $2.5 million higher than previous quarter, driven by higher planned LOE costs in the first quarter for certain annual maintenance and onetime projects.

We are forecasting our total lease operating expenses to decrease throughout the remainder of the year with many of the one-off expense projects completed in the first quarter and several cost-saving initiatives starting to take effect. Our lease operating expenses were partially offset by approximately $600,000 of income generated by Magnify Energy Services. Magnify income is expected to continue growing throughout the year as it expands its business by acquiring additional compressors and initiating water hauling services in the second quarter.

The company's total capital investment for the quarter was approximately $19.1 billion. The majority of this capital was invested at Beta as we continue our electrification and emission reduction facility project and initiated our development program. The remaining capital was invested in facility upgrades at Bairoil, various capital workovers across our asset base, and approximately $700,000 for Magnify equipment. Capital for the remainder of 2024 will mostly be allocated to continued development and facility enhancements at Beta, high-return workovers across our assets and non-operated projects.

With respect to our non-operated activity in the Eagle Ford, the company is expected to participate in 13 gross 0.7 debt new development wells and 2 gross 0.4 net recompletion projects, while at East Texas, the company is evaluating participation in 3 gross 0.8 net wells. At Beta, we completed the second phase of electrification and emission reduction infrastructure projects in the first quarter, which involves successfully replacing diesel driven injection pumps with electric pumps on the Elly platform.

We are now proceeding with the third and final phase of the project, which involves installing selective catalytic producers or SCRs on our rig engines on the Ellen platform. Amplify remains on target to meet the compliance deadline in the fourth quarter of 2024 as prescribed by the district air-quality regulations. After completing these projects, we do not anticipate additional material facility investments at Beta in the near future, which will significantly increase the free cash flow from Beta going forward.

In conjunction, with the cost savings to be realized by the large facility projects at Beta, we also anticipate substantial production growth as a result of our 2024 development work. The company spud the A45 well from the Ellen platform in March and successfully reached the objective formation. Amplify formation laws reinforce the company's views that the target interval has a high oil saturation and is expected to deliver excellent results.

During drilling operations, Amplify experienced equipment issues, including in rig engine failure, causing an extended period of downtime with the whole open leading to well stability issues. In turn, we were not able to run our casing to our planned depth of the production formation, leading us to set the casing high. This will require us to complete the well through a smaller casing design resulting in altered completion for the well. Due to equipment availability for the revised completion and because commencement of the third phase of electrification project is critical to achieve the project deadlines, we are deferring the completion of A45 well into the fourth quarter of 2024 when we are finished with the SCR installation on the Ellen rig engines.

We expect to spud our second development well this month. With its completion anticipated in June, and we plan to spud two additional development wells in the third quarter. With our facility in development drilling investments at Beta, we anticipate a significant increase in the profitability and overall value of the assets that will be realized as we execute these initiatives this year. Coupled this with continued optimization projects and cost-saving efforts across our asset base, including the continued build out of Magnify Energy Services, we continue to expect 2024 to be a transformational year for the company where we start to realize the full value of Amplify's assets base. With that, I will turn it over to Jim.

Thank you, Dan. I would now like to discuss the following items. First quarter financial performance, balance sheet and liquidity and hedges.

With respect to first quarter financial performance, the company reported a net loss of approximately $9.4 million compared to $43.6 million of net income in the prior quarter. The change is primarily attributable to a noncash unrealized loss on commodity derivatives due to prices increasing throughout the first quarter. As Martyn previously mentioned, first quarter adjusted EBITDA was $24.9 million, which exceeded our expectations.

First quarter revenue was also higher than expected due to strong crude oil prices, combined with less downtime at Beta versus our plan. The futures curve for crude oil is above our initial guidance assumptions, which is providing a strong tailwind for 2024.

With respect to lease operating costs, first quarter lease operating expenses were approximately $38.3 million and averaged $20.78 per BOE. LOE was higher than the prior quarter in large part to a one-time adjustment that occurred in the fourth quarter, in addition to scheduled maintenance and other routine annual expenses. Amplify expects quarterly LOE for the remainder of the year to be lower than the first quarter, with full year LOE remaining within the original guidance range.

First quarter GPT costs were $4.8 million or $2.59 per BOE. First quarter GPT was down 3% versus the prior quarter. We expect these lower costs will continue into 2024.

Cash G&A in the first quarter was $7.9 million or $4.5 per BOE, which was up $1.7 million from the prior quarter. This increase was in line with expectations and primarily due to year end processes that impact various cost drivers annually in the first, and a one-time cost associated with the early termination of our Tulsa office lease.

Adjusting for the early lease termination costs, G&A was flat compared to Q1 2023. The company anticipates that quarterly cash G&A expenses will be materially lower throughout the remainder of the year. And as a result, we have not adjusted our original G&A guidance range. In the first quarter, we incurred $3.5 million of interest expense, down $0.3 million compared to the prior quarter and down $2.2 million versus the same quarter a year ago.

Amplify invested $19.1 million of capital in the first quarter. In addition to ramping up activity at Beta, the company also elected to accelerate a short turnaround at Bairoil. Originally planned to occur in the second quarter, Amplify opted to conduct a turnaround in the first quarter to take advantage of the downtime associated with another project. As a result, first quarter capital was slightly higher than expected, but because it was an acceleration, the company has elected not to adjust capital in our 2024 guidance.

As Dan mentioned, we are also participating in development wells in the Eagle Ford and evaluating several in East Texas, and we expect to see production from those wells starting in 2025. Free cash flow, defined as adjusted EBITDA, less CapEx and cash interest expense was $2.3 million for the first quarter of 2024. Despite accelerating capital into the first quarter, this result exceeded expectations and Amplify has increased our annual free cash flow guidance range. Amplify has now generated positive free cash flow in 15 of the last 16 quarters, illustrating the strong sustainable cash-generating potential of our matured, diversified asset base.

On May 2, 2024, we completed the regularly scheduled semiannual redetermination of our borrowing base, which was reaffirmed at $150 million with elected commitments of $135 billion. The next redetermination is expected to occur in the fourth quarter of 2024. As of March 31, Amplify had net debt of approximately $112 million, consisting of $115 million outstanding under our revolving credit facility and $3 million of cash and cash equivalent.

At the end of the first quarter, the company's liquidity was $23 million and net debt to last 12 months, adjusted EBITDA was 1.3 times. The increase in net debt versus the prior quarter was primarily due to expected changes in working capital and increased investment activity. As of May 8, our forecasted crude oil production was approximately 70% to 75% hedged for 2024, 45% to 50% hedged for 2025 and 10% to 15% hedged in 2026.

On the gas side, we are 80% to 90% hedged for 2024 through 2025 and 55% to 60% hedged in 2026. In the first quarter, we added gas hedges covering a portion of our expected 2026 production and crude hedges covering a portion of our 2024 expected production. We will continue monitoring the market to supplement our strong hedge positions going forward.

With that, I'll turn the call back to Martyn.

Thank you, Jim. As I mentioned earlier on this call, we are increasing guidance based on better-than-expected first quarter results and continued strength in crude oil prices. Amplify updated guidance is now based on flat commodity prices for WTI crude oil of $78/Bbl and Henry Hub natural gas of $2.25/MMBtu. As previously disclosed, the company expects to invest 85% to 95% of its capital in the first three quarters of the year, primarily in connection with the Beta project. Additional guidance details are provided in our earnings release and can be found in the latest investor presentation currently available on our website.

In summary, 2024 is off to a good start. With a strong balance sheet, compelling strategic initiatives underway and a motivated and capable workforce, we are optimistic about our future. We believe the Bairoil monetization and Beta development have the potential to provide a catalyst for market outperformance while also enhancing our flexibility as we consider and evaluate potential capital return options.

We will continue to find ways to enhance shareholder value through diligent asset management, our relentless focus on managing our cost structure and prudent capital allocation. We remain confident that the initiatives Amplify is actively pursuing this year have the potential to be transformative for the company.

With that, operator, we are now open for questions.

Jeff Grampp, Alliance Global Partners.

To start off first with Beta and the mechanical issue that that appeared here. I'm specifically wondering if there's any anticipated impact to production from the well, given the change in completion plan? And then prospectively, if there's any kind of learnings that can be applied to the next wells to, I guess, kind of de-risk or mitigate any potential issues re-arising on future drilling?

Hi, Jeff. This is Dan. The issues we had with the well, to answer your second part of your question, there was equipment failures on a rig. The good thing is we've replaced all the components that failed during this operation. So we do not foresee those issues come in the future.

For the altered completion, yeah, not much difference, just a smaller casing design. And we do not expect any real material differences in the productivity of this well. And like we've said, we're encouraged by -- we did log the zone that we intend to produce from and expect that to perform very well. The real impact of this is this one well be coming on towards the end of the year as opposed to this time of year. And the remaining drilling we have is still on schedule.

Understood. Great. I appreciate that detail. My follow-up with respect to the Bairoil limited turnaround. Can you talk a little bit more about the strategy to change that timing? And then can you clarify, apologies if this was mentioned, is there expected to be another kind of more traditional turnaround later this year? Or what's kind of the timeline that you guys might expect for one another turnaround may be needed at Bailroil?

Hey, Jeff, good morning. So we've been looking at the turnaround strategy. Traditionally, we've done these every year, but we've kind of stretch them out a little bit towards more like 18 months from 12 months. And because we've added additional capacity on compression and replaced some things over the years, we're actually able now to probably go potentially as long as two years in between turnarounds. This particular, we were replacing a section of line that we needed to replace. And so instead of -- we wanted to get that out of the way. And so we did it in March. It was planned in late May, June originally.

So basically, all we did was accelerate and instead of what's usually a 7 to 10-day turnaround, we did in two to three days. And so we don't anticipate another turnaround until sometime next year. So there won't be another turnaround this year. This is basically the replacement. So it's a much shorter, less costly, more efficient turnaround that also has less overall impact on total crude production for the year.

Because when you're down 7 to 10 days on a CO2 flood, it takes a little while to ramp back up. So this is less impactful. And by doing it this way, like I said, because we can do compressor annuals and things like that during the year now because we have redundancy, it's a lot of to kind of do things a little bit more efficiently overall.

Understood. Appreciate those details, and thanks for the time.

Thanks, Jeff.

Subash Chandra, Benchmark.

Yeah, good morning, everyone. Question on Beta. So production now has picked up every quarter over the past year since the restart. What do you think of base production at this point? And is any of it still being hindered with some of the modifications being made to the platform where it might argue for a higher base production next year independent of the development work?

Yeah, this is Dan. So outside of the developments, we still have a handful of wells pre-shutdown that still need workovers. So there is some incremental production that could be realized from Beta from that. But as of now, I think, where we're at now is probably for base production before development. And yeah, maybe some incremental.

The large facility projects we keep talking about, been working on for some time now, that's going to mostly drive cost saving initiatives. And there's cost savings around come from, we're essentially going to reduce all of our diesel usage for power generation, being supplemented with just produced gas, generate power through our generators and then also supplement it with short power we purchase. In addition of that, we won't have to buy nearly as much NOx credits that we currently have to buy under the South Coast Air Quality District. So that will reduce costs as well. So that's mostly on the cost-saving side.

Okay. Got you. So I guess the discussion on the direction, LOE and CapEx, doesn't sound like it was a lot of A45 related costs in the LOE, CapEx in the first quarter. Is that a fair comment that that wasn't the reason for some of the overages?

Yeah, I think there is obviously some capital costs related to the AFE. We started the A45 in March. So that part about that was in March and there will be some in April as well. Most of this is because in one, we accelerated the turnaround, two, we've accelerated projects of Beta, specifically on the facility side. And we've actually managed to what was originally going to be 15 days of downtime during the year, we've managed to shrink that and we'll have less downtime during the year because we've kind of taken advantage of some other opportunities to move forward some of that facilities project. And so it's less impactful as we go forward to the year.

So, had a little bit of a tumultuous impact on Q1, especially on the LOE and capital side. But if you look at our overall guidance, we're not changing overall guidance. It's just an acceleration as we've had to kind of change timing as we've seen opportunities to bring things forward and then thus bring forward the impact of these changes at the same time.

Okay. Got you. If I can just ask on the sinking fund. So the $16 million goes to $9 million. Is that fair? And when does that start? And is there any sort of, you know, offsetting balances, I don't know how this stuff works, but maybe something on the credit facility or something versus a pretty clean 16 goes to 9 on cash outlays?

Yeah. No, I think you said it perfectly the first time. Basically there's a federal portion of this and the state portion of this and the federal portion is 8 and the state portion is 1. It was essentially -- so what was 16 is now 9 and I anticipate that's kind of (technical difficulty) and going forward. And so that's really the change that we made was -- basically replacing the surety group that had been in there for several over years and basically reallocating ourselves with a different group as we kind of move forward and getting the right people in the right group to kind of manage that process going forward.

Okay. Good to know. If I just ask one last one and I'll hop back in the queue. So Bairoil, when are the final bids due?

So that process will take place. Basically, we're kind of wrapping up our middle of towards the end of data rooms at this point. The bids will be due towards the end of May. There's traditionally a first round, second round and then you'll negotiate a PSA. And obviously, we've got the added complication of the fact that we're doing kind of a dual process with a monetization structure as well.

So we anticipate this will happen over the summer and potentially in advance of the next call. And so we'll obviously update the market at the appropriate time, but that is coming soon.

Thank you all for your time.

At this time, I would like to turn the call back to management for any additional or closing remarks.

Thank you. With that, I'd just like to say thank you to all of our employees for their outstanding efforts and dedication so far this year. And I'd also like to express my appreciation to all our stakeholders for their continued support.

Thank you for participating on the call today. And as always, if there are any questions, please don't hesitate to reach out. Thank you, everyone.

Thank you. This does conclude the Amplify Energy's first quarter 2024 investor conference call. You may disconnect your line at this time and have a wonderful day.