Black Stone Minerals, L.P. (NYSE:BSM) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript
Black Stone Minerals, L.P. (NYSE:BSM) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript February 20, 2024
Black Stone Minerals, L.P. isn't one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).
Operator: Good day and welcome to the Black Stone Minerals Fourth Quarter and Year End Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] I’d now like to turn the call over to Mark Meaux, Director of Finance. Please go ahead.
Mark Meaux: Thank you. Good morning to everyone. Thank you for joining us either by phone or online for Black Stone Minerals fourth quarter and full year 2023 earnings conference call. Today’s call is being recorded and will be available on our website along with the earnings release, which was issued last night. Before we start, I’d like to advise you that we will be making forward-looking statements during this call about our plans, expectations and assumptions regarding our future performance. These statements involve risks that may cause our actual results to differ materially from the results expressed or implied in our forward-looking statements. For a discussion of these risks, you should refer to the cautionary information about forward-looking statements in our press release from yesterday and the risk factors section of our 2023 10-K that we expect to file later today.
We may refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures that we believe are useful in evaluating our performance. Reconciliation of those measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures and other information about these non-GAAP metrics are described in our earnings press release from yesterday, which can be found on our website at www.blackstoneminerals.com. Joining me on the call from the company are Tom Carter, Chairman, CEO and President; Evan Kiefer, Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer; Carrie Clark, Senior Vice President, Land and Commercial; and Steve Putman, Senior Vice President and General Counsel. I’ll now turn the call over to Tom.
Tom Carter: Good morning to everyone on the call, and thank you for joining us today to discuss our fourth quarter and full year ‘23 results. We posted strong results with adjusted EBITDA of $125.5 million for the quarter, bringing us to $474.7 million in 2023. We generated total production volumes for the fourth quarter of 41,400 BOE per day, 2% above the upper end of our full year guidance range. Royalty volumes for the quarter were 38,900 BOE, where we saw oil volumes trend down in the Bakken and Eagle Ford, but were offset by an increase in Mid/Del. We also saw a modest decrease in natural gas volumes, primarily in the Louisiana Haynesville conforming with natural gas trends in our industry. Yes, we see the glass as half full.
Today, 39 wells have been turned to sales in the Shelby Trough under our development agreements with Aethon. We announced in December that Aethon elected to use a time-out provision in our development agreement that specifies that when prices fall below a certain threshold, they may elect to temporarily suspend contractually obligated drilling on our acreage. At this time, we do not expect the time-out will impact the next 12-month cycle for the drilling and completion of Aethon-operated wells that were spud prior to the time-out. And in fact, Aethon has indicated they may drill additional wells during the time-out period and have actually begun operations on several. We are working closely with Aethon to determine the effects of the time-out as we focus on longer-term expectations for production in 2025.
See also 25 Most Popular Email Newsletters in the US in 2024 and 12 Best Gold Mining Companies to Invest In According to Analysts.
To continue reading the Q&A session, please click here.
