Earnings Labs

W&T Offshore, Inc. (WTI)

Q2 2018 Earnings Call· Fri, Aug 3, 2018

$3.97

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Greetings and welcome to the W&T Offshore’s second quarter earnings conference call. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator Instructions]. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Lisa Elliott with Dennard Lascar Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Lisa Elliott

Analyst

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. We are glad to have you join us on W&T Offshore’s conference call to review financial and operational results for the second quarter of 2018. Before I turn the call over to the Company, I would like to remind you that information recorded on this call speaks only as of today, August 2, 2018, and therefore time-sensitive information may no longer be accurate as of the date of any replay. Also, please refer to the second quarter 2018 financial and operational results announcement W&T released yesterday for a disclosure on forward-looking statements and reconciliations of non-GAAP measures. At this time, I’d like to turn the call over to Mr. Tracy Krohn, W&T’s Chairman and CEO.

Tracy Krohn

Analyst

Thanks, Lisa. Good morning everyone, and thanks for joining us today. We have a lot to cover, so let’s started. With me this morning are Tom Murphy, our Chief Operations Officer, Danny Gibbons, our Chief Financial Officer; Steve Schroeder, our Chief Technical Officer, and also Janet Yang, our VP-Business and Corporate Development who are going to be available to answer questions later during the call. We had an excellent second quarter, with a really high level of cash flow generation and continued drilling success. During the quarter our production volumes came in at the mid-range of our guidance at 3.4 million barrels of oil equivalent and benefited from a 39.5% increase in our realized sales price compared to the second quarter of last year. This drove revenues up and that’s up $26.3 million to $149.6 million in the second quarter. Our percentage of production from liquids continues to rise and was over 60% in the second quarter. Similarly, our realized crude oil price was up over 50% from the second quarter last year. Sales from liquids made up almost 84% of revenues in the second quarter of this year. We are also really pleased that realized prices from our oil production from the Gulf of Mexico tracked closely to the WTI benchmark price. For the first six months of 2018, our average realized crude oil sales price was $64.93 per barrel compared to a WTI benchmark price of $65.55 per barrel. So, not much differential Gulf wide. During April 2018, we entered into four different commodity derivatives contracts for crude oil totalling 11,000 barrels per day starting in May and continuing through the end of the year. The positions include swaps, costless collars and a purchased put option. We have posted three commodity derivative positions to the investor relations section…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions]. Our first question comes from John White with Roth Capital. Please go ahead.

John White

Analyst

Good morning, everybody.

Tracy Krohn

Analyst

Good morning, John.

John White

Analyst

Say, came in quite a bit below, what I was expecting on lease operating expense, can you talk a little bit more about that?

Tracy Krohn

Analyst

Yes. We continue to improve operating expenses. The things we’ve done is monitor our transportation requirements and streamline that a little bit. We have a couple of maintenance projects will show up in the fourth quarter that were deferred, but other than that I mean it’s – it really is a true drop in LOE.

John White

Analyst

Well, that’s great. Nice results all the way round. Thanks for the update on the A-12 and good luck on drilling the deeper portion.

Tracy Krohn

Analyst

Thank you, sir. I appreciate it.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from John Aschenbeck with Seaport Global Securities. Please go ahead.

John Aschenbeck

Analyst · Seaport Global Securities. Please go ahead.

Good morning, Tracy. Thanks for taking my question, and congrats on the nice update and on the progress you’ve made over the last year.

Tracy Krohn

Analyst · Seaport Global Securities. Please go ahead.

Thank you, sir. Appreciate it.

John Aschenbeck

Analyst · Seaport Global Securities. Please go ahead.

My first one, I was going to ask about the Q3 outlook, but you addressed that in your prepared remarks. But did want to dig a little bit further into the Q4 outlook, and I was hoping you could walk us through just the projects you have coming online at the end of the year and how those will affect your growth as you exit the year? It just – it seems like you’ll be set up with some nice momentum as you exit 2018 and then enter into 2019?

Tracy Krohn

Analyst · Seaport Global Securities. Please go ahead.

Yes, you got a seasoned growth at Virgo, some increase in production, we’re going to finished with the existing A-12 well and go back to A-13 well. So we would expect to have that, of course, the A-12 well online and the A-13 well online for the end of the year. We also see some increased production at Mahogany while raising the increased production at Mahogany. We’re drilling on the A-19 well there now, which is going to test several of the field – existing field, we’ll go blow in and test it a little bit more underneath that particularly have some relatively good prospectively below that location. That’s slightly up at the existing A-14 well. So, I think that’s what you’ll see some of the increase in production and who knows, you might see an acquisition or something like that along the road.

John Aschenbeck

Analyst · Seaport Global Securities. Please go ahead.

Okay, got it. I guess we’ll just have to stay tuned. I guess kind of keeping with that topic, as you exit the year and you look into 2019, I was curious if you could provide any type of initial thoughts around your outlook. I believe, earlier in this year, you first wanted to get a better clarity on the 2019 maturities before looking out beyond this year, but it sounds like a solution is almost eminent now for the 2019. So I’d love to get any type of color you could provide on 2019 and what it could look like both from a capital standpoint and on the production side?

Tracy Krohn

Analyst · Seaport Global Securities. Please go ahead.

Yes, I appreciate it. I know that most of the investors and shareholders have been [indiscernible]. This team has worked really hard to get us to where we need to be. We’re actively looking at now in the future for the refinance of the entire debt structure and that includes, of course, some substantial reduction in that debt structure. We’ve got – fortunately, we’ve got more options that we did a year ago on how we do that, that conclude different ways to finance the existing debt. We’ve got those two maturities outstanding for the unsecured notes, $189 million, $190 million, we’ll call it, and the other $75 million in the [indiscernible]. But both notes come due in 2019, we’re going to reduce all – most of that debt if any found what else comes out in the interim that would be attracted to us. But the idea would be to substantially delever the entire structure and then refinance of it. We believe that a lot of our bondholders would be pretty pleased with that and we hope that they would join us in our future endeavors as well. So I think that solution looks pretty solid right now. So we’re endeavouring to move in that direction as quickly as we can.

John Aschenbeck

Analyst · Seaport Global Securities. Please go ahead.

Okay, great. Appreciate all the color there. That wasgreat. Last one from me. Just a follow-up on your recent drilling JV and as you’ve gone through that process and closed that transaction, I was wondering how that’s better positioned to you to move forward with another JV, specifically the acquisition JV that I know you’ve been working on for a while now. I understand that you can’t provide too much detail, but I would think that this drilling JV has helped to give you some type of framework to work off of as you progress toward an acquisition JV and I’d love to get any color you could provide on that front?

Tracy Krohn

Analyst · Seaport Global Securities. Please go ahead.

Yes. Clearly, getting the JV on the drilling side of it now was very important to us. We accomplished all of our goals in the way of, I guess, to reduce the debt and set us up for additional acquisitions, along with that will come another RBO facility, so that facility actually expires in November of it by some terms. We’re very confident that it will extend that or extend it and increase it along with the reduction debt that we received with the existing debt structure. So with that – that’s one weapon in our quiver for the – for potential acquisitions that will make it a lot easier to do the joint venture acquisition program that we see. But we think that the JV venture would be somewhat similar to what you might see in the past with the joint venture drilling program and that a lot of the framework has already laid out for [indiscernible]. We spent a lot of time and effort with the joint venture so that we got investors come with how we propose to do that. So I think that’ll make it a lot easier. And then it’s – I did proper targets that will fulfill that, and I think we’re pretty quick.

John Aschenbeck

Analyst · Seaport Global Securities. Please go ahead.

Okay, great. That’s it from me, Tracy. Thanks for the time.

Tracy Krohn

Analyst · Seaport Global Securities. Please go ahead.

I might have one other thing, John. People ask me about what our goals are on the acquisition front, I’ll tell you that it’s healthy numbers, I’m going to speculate up to $2 billion on the acquisition front.

John Aschenbeck

Analyst · Seaport Global Securities. Please go ahead.

All right. Thanks. Appreciate that.

Tracy Krohn

Analyst · Seaport Global Securities. Please go ahead.

Thank you, sir.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Richard Tullis with Capital One Securities. Please go ahead.

Richard Tullis

Analyst · Capital One Securities. Please go ahead.

Hey, thanks, good morning, Tracy.

Tracy Krohn

Analyst · Capital One Securities. Please go ahead.

Good morning, Richard.

Richard Tullis

Analyst · Capital One Securities. Please go ahead.

Looking at the demands of JV, just if I can get into the mechanics just a little bit, what is the estimated impact on reserves for any of the projects that were transferred into the JV, the 14 projects, Tracy? Any impact on 1P reserves and who would be esteem [ph] on 2P reserves?

Tracy Krohn

Analyst · Capital One Securities. Please go ahead.

Well, the impact on 1P reserves is not very much, particularly as it regards our lending facilities, most of this program has to do with exploration. So we really – we’re able to effectively monetize our exploration projects that we would not normally receive credit for in certainly, not the credit markets, but even in the capital markets. So that was a real benefit from for us. We did drill a couple of proved and developed locations that were included in the in the reserve base. The exact number on that, I don’t really have in my fingertips, but it was, I would say, was real substantial and particularly, as it relates to current price of the value in the reserve base. And even the from the release that we’ve put out that increased the reserve base, 5%, even there and also the DV [ph] considerably to about $1.3 billion. Also, the effect with that was put in revenue.

Richard Tullis

Analyst · Capital One Securities. Please go ahead.

Okay. That’s helpful, Tracy. And from a follow-up – looking at Heidelberg, obviously, a nice acquisition and timing was certainly good. What are you hearing as far as potential drilling plans there, any other sort of work that may happen, say, over the next one or two years?

Tracy Krohn

Analyst · Capital One Securities. Please go ahead.

Right now, I think we’re pretty much in harvest mode. I think there is some additional upside there, maybe a tieback or two. So that’s important to us. But right now, the fields are performing actually better than our initial estimates.

Richard Tullis

Analyst · Capital One Securities. Please go ahead.

Okay. That’s all for me. Thank you.

Tracy Krohn

Analyst · Capital One Securities. Please go ahead.

Thank you, sir.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions]. Our next question comes from [indiscernible]. Please go ahead.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Just two questions. One is, can you please tell us a bit more about the relative value of investing in CapEx versus potential acquisitions that you can see right now?

Tracy Krohn

Analyst

Yes. That’s always a good question, Sebastian [ph]. Clearly, if the opportunity presents itself to purchase reserves at less than our F&D costs, that’s a real advantage. It takes some of the risk out of it. So I’m very optimistic is to how we increase the growth of the company, I think you have to have a balance of organic growth and acquisition growth as well. So – and that’s how we’ve done it for the last three decades. But clearly, where the opportunity presents itself to purchase reserves and the risk out of it, that’s a preference for us.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Thank you. And the second question is, on the capital structure, so you alluded to the fact that you can take the 2019 maturities with cash and also mentioned that you would try to be part of the remaining debt. And I was wondering if you could tell us a bit more about whether you want to refinance any layer or you want to refinance the whole of it and maybe with some other operation at the same time?

Tracy Krohn

Analyst

Good question. If I wasn’t clear on that, I could very clear. We’re going to refinance all of the debt. We’re going to fund some of the debt that it’ll make more attractive. We expect to get into debt ratio we said that will be very acceptable to investors in our banks and everyone else. So yes, we seek to refinance all of the debt and pay down a portion of the debt. Okay.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay. All right. Thank you very much. Congrats again.

Tracy Krohn

Analyst

Thank you, sir.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We have a follow-up question from Richard Tullis with Capital One Securities. Please go ahead.

Richard Tullis

Analyst

Yes, thanks for getting back to me. Maybe for Danny or Tracy, what’s the status of – I guess that Apache-related lawsuit that you had a judgment and a little while back, how the things stand there, Tracy?

Tracy Krohn

Analyst

That’s on appeal in the Fiserv [ph].

Richard Tullis

Analyst

Any of them involved in there?

Tracy Krohn

Analyst

Yes. You can figure out how to time line what – what our course. You’re far better at it than I am, but I don’t really know how to handicap. We’ve filed the briefs in the other side as filed briefs, so I don’t really know if I – I mean, survey by it, yes, I would handicap it a year.

Richard Tullis

Analyst

I understand. Thank you very much.

Tracy Krohn

Analyst

Yes sir.

Operator

Operator

There are no further questions, I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Krohn for closing comment.

Tracy Krohn

Analyst

Well, thanks everyone for being with us today. That’s all I have. Stay tuned. We’ve got more good news to come and we’ll talk to you soon. Thank you very much.