APA Corporation (NASDAQ:APA) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript
APA Corporation (NASDAQ:APA) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript February 22, 2024
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Operator: Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the APA Corporation's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2023 Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Gary Clark, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Gary Clark: Good morning, and thank you for joining us on APA Corporation's Fourth Quarter and Year-end 2023 Financial and Operational Results Conference Call. We will begin the call with an overview by CEO, John Christmann. Steve Riney, President and CFO, will then provide further color on our results and outlook. Also on the call and available to answer questions are Dave Pursell, Executive Vice President of Development; Tracey Henderson, Executive Vice President of Exploration; and Clay Bretches, Executive Vice President of Operations. Our prepared remarks will be about 15 minutes in length, with the remainder of the hour allotted for Q&A. In conjunction with yesterday's press release, I hope you've had the opportunity to review our financial and operational supplement, which can be found on our Investor Relations website at investor.apacorp.com.
Please note that we may discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of the differences between these measures and the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures can be found in the supplemental information provided on our website. Consistent with previous reporting practices, adjusted production numbers cited in today's call are adjusted to exclude noncontrolling interest in Egypt and Egypt tax barrels. I'd like to remind everyone that today's discussion will contain forward-looking estimates and assumptions based on our current views and reasonable expectations. However, a number of factors could cause actual results to differ materially from what we discuss on today's call. A full disclaimer is located with the supplemental information on our website.
Also, please note that the forward guidance we provided with our fourth quarter results reflects our outlook for APA Corporation on a stand-alone basis only and does not incorporate pro forma effects of the pending Callon Petroleum acquisition. And with that, I will turn the call over to John.
John Christmann: Good morning, and thank you for joining us. On the call today, I will review our key accomplishments in 2023, comment on fourth quarter performance and provide an overview of our 2024 plans and objectives. APA has a long-standing strategic framework for managing our business that emphasizes investing capital with a focus on long-term full-cycle returns, pursuing moderate sustainable production growth, strengthening the balance sheet to underpin significant cash returns to shareholders, responsibly managing costs, including rightsizing the organization commensurate with lower activity levels, growing inventory, both organically through existing play expansion and new area exploration, and more recently, building scale and/or adding inventory inorganically through acquisitions such as Callon.
We have patiently employed this strategy through periods of considerable price volatility, and our approach going forward will remain unchanged. Looking at APA's results, there were a number of highlights in 2023. The more notable achievements include on the whole, delivering on all of our production and financial metrics very close to original guidance. Egypt gross oil production lagged expectations for most of the year, but this was offset by continued strong performance from the Permian. Free cash flow generation of nearly $1 billion, 66% of which was returned to shareholders. We repurchased $329 million of common stock and paid $308 million in dividends. Adjusted oil production increased 4% from the fourth quarter 2022 to the fourth quarter of 2023, driven by Midland and Delaware production, which was up in excess of 20% over the same time period.
We successfully appraised the Sapakara and Krabdagu discoveries on Block 58 in Suriname, identifying an estimated 700 million barrels of recoverable oil resource. On the ESG front, we now have implemented more than 70% of the projects necessary to achieve our 2022 goal of eliminating 1 million tons of annual CO2 equivalent emissions by the end of this year. Additionally, we replaced or converted more than 2,000 pneumatic devices in the United States during 2023, which aligns with our priority to reduce methane emissions across our operations. And lastly, I want to recognize our operation teams for delivering the lowest recordable incident rate since we began tracking and reporting this metric. We highly value this commitment to safety and excellence, and thank you for your continued diligence on this front.
Moving to fourth quarter results. Upstream capital investment of $520 million was slightly above guidance, as we spent $27 million on the initial phase of our winter exploration program in Alaska. The U.S. delivered another strong quarter, with oil production in line with guidance and up 12% compared to the fourth quarter last year. Throughout 2023, our 5-rig drilling program was highly efficient, meeting or exceeding all key performance metrics. Similarly, well connections and well performance were in line with or better than expectations. Our Midland and Delaware Basin teams are driving outstanding results, and we expect that will continue this year. In the North Sea, production for the quarter was below guidance due to unplanned compression downtime at both Beryl Alpha and Forties during the month of December.
And in Egypt, adjusted production exceeded guidance, primarily due to higher natural gas production and the positive impact of lower oil prices on volumes within the PSC construct. Gross oil production, however, was lower than expected for a few reasons. For several quarters now, we have been working through some activity delays and scheduling constraints associated with limited available workover rig capacity in Egypt. In addition to routine well maintenance and uphole recompletions, we also utilize workover rigs for completing many of our new drill wells. With the increased size and improving efficiency of our drilling program, the demand for workover rigs to complete new wells has exceeded expectations. This meant the workover rigs were doing fewer recompletions than planned and our workover backlog increased throughout the year.
Thus, while production from the new wells was a bit better than expectations, Egypt gross oil volumes fell behind as we could not adequately support the recompletion and workover programs. Compounding this, we also experienced a number of early life failures on new electrical submersible pumps known as ESPs. During 2023, we had 9 new wells impacted by early ESP failures, 2 of which occurred in the fourth quarter on high-volume wells. We have traced this problem to 1 manufacturing facility, and the situation is in the process of being remediated. In 2024, we will gear down the Egypt drilling program a bit, which will free up workover rig capacity to reduce the workover and recompletion backlog. I will say more about the effects of this on 2024 activity in a few minutes.
Turning now to our 2024 outlook. Given the potential for a flat to lower price environment this year, we have established an activity plan and budget based on $70 WTI and $75 Brent. We continue to diligently manage overhead and operating costs, and we are reducing our total capital investment to less than $2 billion. This includes approximately $100 million of investment for exploration activities and $50 million for FEED work and potential long-lead items in Suriname. This year's budget will redirect capital to the Permian Basin, resulting in reduced Egypt drilling program, which I mentioned earlier. The outcome of this investment profile should be relatively flat year-over-year adjusted oil and natural gas production, but lower NGL volumes given our current plans to reject ethane.
As in 2023, we expect robust Permian oil production growth to roughly offset production declines in the North Sea, while Egypt adjusted production remains relatively flat. In the U.S., total volumes will be up about 2% on a BOE basis despite our current plan to reject ethane for the entirety of 2024. We also project a strong finish to the year, with U.S. oil production up more than 10% in the fourth quarter of '24 compared to the fourth quarter of '23. This growth will be driven by the Midland and Delaware Basins, where we expect to achieve our goal of returning oil production to pre-COVID levels by year-end. In Egypt, we anticipate that our moderated pace of drilling will result in a gross oil production decline. However, adjusted production should remain relatively flat year-over-year, primarily due to lower oil price expectations and the moderating effects of the PSC.
And in the North Sea, with our significant reduction in capital investment prompted by the energy profits levy, we anticipate a roughly 20% year-over-year production decrease. This includes the effect of a lengthy planned maintenance turnaround that will impact both second and third quarter volumes. Before closing, I'd like to take a minute to highlight our performance in the Permian and provide some thoughts on our pending acquisition of Callon Petroleum. For several years now, APA's Permian operations have been hitting on all cylinders and exceeding oil production guidance. We have delivered continuous improvement in well productivity and capital efficiency, and we expect this to continue in 2024. Since 2019, we have invested considerable time and technical resources in optimizing our drilling economics in the Permian Basin, and the results have been excellent.
Our Midland Basin well productivity has moved up into the top quartile producers as measured by third-party analysts, and we continue to improve Delaware Basin productivity measures each year. The Callon acquisition we announced in early January will bring scale to our Delaware position and balance to our overall Permian asset base, making it fairly evenly weighted between the Midland and the Delaware upon closing. While Callon has experienced operational and productivity challenges in the past, more recently, they have begun to make good progress towards demonstrating the upside potential of their acreage. By leveraging APA's technical capabilities and work processes across the Callon acreage, we expect to further build on their progress, most notably in the areas of capital productivity from well spacing, target zone selection, frac design and drilling, completion and infrastructure efficiencies.
When we first announced the acquisition, we assigned only $55 million to operational synergies and improvements. However, we are confident that there is substantial upside to this number. While the transaction is accretive on cost synergies alone, the big win-win for shareholders of both companies will be the integration of the assets into a larger Permian platform and the technical optimization, capital allocation, process knowledge and discipline that APA brings to the table. We look forward to updating our 2024 U.S. guidance upon completion of the transaction. In closing, we are managing the business with a clear and consistent strategy, adhering to our discipline and delivering on our commitments and financial objectives. In the last 3 years, we have reduced outstanding bond debt by $3.2 billion and repurchased $2.6 billion or 20% of our shares outstanding.
Our Permian Basin and Egypt operations are delivering a high level of free cash flow, along with moderate oil growth in aggregate. We have progressed a large-scale exploration and appraisal program in Suriname to FEED study, and we believe this will drive high-margin oil production beginning in the 2028 time frame. And more recently, we have further expanded our exploration portfolio with large-scale opportunities in Alaska and offshore Uruguay. While the industry may experience some near-term commodity price weakness, we maintain a constructive medium- and long-term outlook. Accordingly, we will continue to invest a measured amount of capital in the differential longer-term exploration opportunities. And lastly, we remain fully committed to returning at least 60% of our free cash flow to shareholders through our base dividend and share buybacks.
And with that, I will turn the call over to Steve Riney.
Stephen Riney: Thank you, John, and good morning. For the fourth quarter, under Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, APA reported consolidated net income of $1.8 billion or $5.78 per diluted common share. As usual, these results include items that are outside of core earnings, the most significant of which was a $1.6 billion increase in net income related to the partial release of the valuation allowance on our deferred tax asset. This was offset by a $167 million after-tax increase in the estimated net remaining decommissioning obligation for the old Fieldwood assets in the Gulf of Mexico. Excluding these and other smaller items, adjusted net income for the fourth quarter was $352 million or $1.15 per share. Free cash flow was $292 million in the quarter.
Through dividends and share repurchases, we returned 68% of this amount to shareholders during the quarter. And as John noted, for the full year, we returned 66% of free cash flow. Please refer to APA's published definition of free cash flow for any reconciliation needs. G&A expense for the quarter was $75 million. This was significantly below guidance, mostly due to the decrease in the APA share price and the mark-to-market impact on previously accrued share-based compensation. In the fourth quarter, our Cheniere gas sales contract contributed free cash flow and pretax net income of $74 million, which was below guidance, as LNG margins over Houston Ship Channel narrowed through the quarter. Turning to 2024. John already discussed our capital and production guidance, so I will just touch on a few other items of note.
Based on recent strip prices, we currently anticipate our Cheniere contract will contribute cash flow of about $100 million for the full year and third-party marketing income related to our gas transport obligations will be roughly breakeven. In the Gulf of Mexico, our remaining Fieldwood-related decommissioning exposure is now $815 million. This is net of remaining security and anticipated future cash flows from the producing properties. These decommissioning costs are estimated to be incurred over the next 10 to 15 years, and in 2024, will amount to around $60 million. Finally, we are preparing for the closing of the Callon acquisition, with a joint integration team working through plans for day 1 and beyond. John already indicated our confidence in meeting or exceeding our $55 million goal for annual operational synergies.
We are equally focused on the transition of G&A activities and the refinancing of the Callon debt. At this time, we still expect the sum of the G&A and financing synergies will meet or exceed our goal of $95 million on an annualized basis. A majority of the G&A synergies are expected to be realized on a run rate basis shortly after closing, with a small portion requiring a transition period, which may take up to a few months. The financing synergies will be realized within a few days of closing, with the refinancing of the Callon debt planned and ready to be put into effect. We noted at the time of the acquisition announcement that the assumption of Callon's debt would increase our leverage metrics slightly. This has had no adverse impact on our discussions with the rating agencies, nor on their published outlooks.
We continue to target a BBB rating or the equivalent thereof with all 3 agencies. For this reason, we remain focused on further debt reduction, which will be achieved through the application of cash flow and possible asset divestments. And with that, I will turn the call over to the operator for Q&A.
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