Earnings Call Transcript - REI Q2 2024

Operator, Operator

Good morning, and welcome to the Ring Energy second-quarter 2024 earnings conference call. I would now like to turn the conference over to Al Petrie, Investor Relations for Ring Energy. Please go ahead.

Al Petrie, Investor Relations

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate your interest in Ring Energy. We'll begin our call with comments from Paul McKinney, our Chairman of the Board and CEO, who will provide an overview of key matters for the second quarter of 2024 as well as our updated outlook; who will then turn the call over to Travis Thomas, Ring's Executive VP and Chief Financial Officer, who will review our financial results. Paul will then return with some closing comments before we open the call for questions. Also joining us on the call today and available for the Q&A session are Alex Dyes, Executive VP of Engineering and Corporate Strategy; and Shawn Young, VP of Operations. During the Q&A session, we ask you to limit your questions to one and a follow-up. You are welcome to reenter the queue later with additional questions. I would also note that we have posted an updated corporate presentation on our website. During the course of this conference call, the company will be making forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws. Investors are cautioned that forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, and those actual results or developments may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Finally, the company can give no assurance that such forward-looking statements will prove to be correct. Ring Energy disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Accordingly, you should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. These and other risks are described in yesterday's press release and in our filings with the SEC. These documents can be found in the Investors section of our website located at www.ringenergy.com. Should one or more of these risks materialize or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially. This conference call also includes references to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable measure under GAAP are contained in yesterday's earnings release. Finally, as a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Paul McKinney, our Chairman and CEO.

Paul McKinney, Chairman and CEO

Thanks, Al, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today and for your interest in Ring Energy. Before I begin to discuss our second-quarter results, I wanted to welcome two new Ring executives, Shawn Young and Phillip Feiner. As we announced in late June, Shawn was promoted to lead our operations team. And as announced yesterday, Phillip joined us last week to lead the legal and human resources efforts here. All of us here at Ring are pleased to be working with them and look forward to properly growing Ring Energy together for the benefit of our stockholders. Let's now turn our attention to the subject at hand, our second-quarter performance. We are pleased to post record sales volumes and record cash generation for both the second quarter and year-to-date. We used our excess cash from this record quarter to pay down $15 million of debt and intend to make additional and material progress reducing debt over the coming quarters, subject, of course, to remaining within the range of current and/or more recent prices. Similar to the first quarter, second-quarter sales volumes exceeded the high end of our initial guidance while operating expenses and capital spending both came in below our guidance ranges. Combined with our improved operational outlook for the second half of 2024, we are well-positioned for ongoing success for the remainder of the year and into next. The primary driver of our record sales volumes in the second quarter was the continued strong returns from our drilling program and the outstanding performance of our operating team to maintain our existing production. The result for the period was a sale of 13,623 barrels of oil per day, which was 2% higher than the first quarter. On a total product basis, we reported second-quarter 2024 sales volumes of 19,786 barrels of oil equivalent per day, which was 4% above the first quarter. Another point to make is the high oil percentage of our product mix of 69%. We will continue to focus our capital spending on undeveloped opportunities with a high oil percentage, especially during these times of favorable realized pricing relative to natural gas. Turning over to lease operating costs. Lease operating expenses, or LOE, during the second quarter were $10.72 per BOE, which is below the low end of our guidance range. Similar to first-quarter performance, our second-quarter LOE results reflect our continuing focus on reducing costs and downtime while completing the integration of the Founders' assets into our operations. I'd like to thank our operating team for their hard work and their dedication to these efforts. Thank you, everyone. Higher-than-anticipated sales volumes and lower-than-expected LOE per BOE, supported by a backdrop of solid oil pricing, resulted in record adjusted EBITDA of $66.4 million for the second quarter, as well as year-to-date growth of 15%. Looking at CapEx, we were pleased to once again post spending levels that were less than the low end of our guidance while the number of producing wells drilled and completed was at the high end of our guidance. The key factors contributing to our lower-than-expected capital costs were increased efficiencies associated with our well completions, enhanced drilling and related logistics, and an improved macro environment associated with our drilling and completion services costs. During the second quarter, we invested $35.4 million in capital expenditures, which included the drilling and completion of five horizontal wells in the CBP and the drilling and completion of six vertical wells in CBP South, three in Ector County, and three in Crane County. Total capital spending also included capital workovers, infrastructure upgrades, and leasing. Record adjusted EBITDA and lower-than-expected CapEx resulted in record adjusted free cash flow of $21.4 million for the second quarter of 2024, which is 70% higher than the same quarter a year ago and represents a 19th consecutive quarter of positive adjusted free cash flow for the company. Combined with our success in the first quarter, we posted record year-to-date adjusted free cash flow of $37 million that was 60% higher than last year. Turning to the balance sheet. We used a portion of our adjusted free cash flow to pay down $15 million of debt in the second quarter and $48 million since closing the Founders acquisition last August. As a result, we ended the second quarter with liquidity of $194.1 million and a leverage ratio of 1.59 times, which was 5% lower than at the beginning of the period. Regarding our guidance for the year, we are updating our full-year 2024 outlook to reflect our first-half performance and a solid view for the remainder of the year. We still plan to drill an average of five horizontal and six vertical wells per quarter, which is consistent with what we did in the second quarter. This approach provides flexibility to react to changing commodity prices and market conditions as well as manage our quarterly cash flow. As we have discussed in the past, our drilling program is designed to organically maintain or slightly grow our oil production. Given the success we are seeing in our development efforts, we are increasing our full-year 2024 production guidance to 13,200 to 13,800 barrels of oil per day and 19,000 to 19,800 barrels of oil equivalent per day, which represents an increase of 4% and 5%, respectively, from our initial guidance earlier this year, assuming the midpoints. Regarding the third quarter, we anticipate sales volumes of 19,000 to 19,800 barrels of oil equivalent per day and, more importantly, our oil production to range between 13,200 and 13,800 barrels of oil per day or an oil mix of approximately 70%. With that, I will turn this over to Travis to provide more details on the quarter, and we'll return to closing comments before we open the call for questions.

Travis Thomas, CFO

Thanks, Paul, and good morning, everyone. As Paul discussed, we are pleased to post second-quarter operational and financial performance that exceeded our initial expectations. The combination of record sales volumes, along with below guidance LOE per BOE and CapEx, contributed to the generation of record adjusted free cash flow that we used to materially pay down debt. To be clear, balance sheet improvement has and will remain a top priority for the company. With that overview, let's look at the quarter in more detail. As in the past, my prepared comments will be focused on our key sequential quarterly results. During the second quarter, we sold 13,623 barrels of oil per day and 19,786 BOE per day. This represents an increase from the first quarter of 2% and 4%, respectively, and, again, was above the top end of our initial guidance. As Paul discussed, the primary driver of our record sales volumes in the second quarter was the outsized positive impact of our drilling program. Our second-quarter average crude oil price differential from NYMEX WTI futures pricing was a negative $0.61 per barrel versus a negative $1.34 per barrel for the first quarter. This was mostly due to the Argus CMA role that increased $0.80 per barrel, offset by the Argus WTI WTS that decreased $0.30 per barrel on average from the first quarter. Our average natural gas price differential from NYMEX futures pricing for the second quarter was a negative $4.31 per Mcf compared to a negative $2.57 per Mcf for the first quarter. Our realized NGL price for the second quarter averaged 12% of WTI compared to 15% for the first quarter. The result was revenue for the second quarter of $99.1 million, a 5% increase from the first quarter, which was due to a $2 million volume variance and a $2.6 million price variance. As noted, we are targeting higher oil mix opportunities since oil accounted for 100% of the revenue, while it was 69% of our total production. That means our positive NGL sales were not quite able to fully offset our negative gas sales, resulting in a minor net loss. As I noted, in the second quarter, we continue to see negative realized pricing for natural gas. While the majority of our GTP costs are reflected as a reduction of the sales price, the larger impact on our realized natural gas pricing reflects the continued product takeaway constraints we have seen in the basin. The good news is additional third-party takeaway capacity is expected to come online with the Matterhorn Express pipeline in West Texas around the end of 2024 that we hope will alleviate some pricing pressure. LOE was $19.3 million for the second quarter versus $18.4 million for the first quarter. Echoing Paul's comments, we were pleased to see LOE come in below the low end of our guidance range of $10.75 to $11.25 per BOE due to lower-than-expected workover costs partially offset by higher electricity and chemical costs. LOE per BOE increased slightly in the second quarter to $10.72 per BOE from $10.60 per BOE in the first quarter. Cash G&A, which excludes share-based compensation, was $5.6 million for the second quarter, essentially flat with the $5.7 million from the first quarter. Our second-quarter results included a loss on derivative contracts of $1.8 million compared to a loss of $19 million for the first quarter, of which $2.6 million was a realized loss, offset by an $800,000 unrealized gain. As a reminder, the unrealized gain loss is just the difference between the mark-to-market values from period to period. Finally, for Q2, we reported net income of $22.4 million or $0.11 per diluted share. This was a significant improvement compared to the first-quarter net income of $5.5 million or $0.03 per diluted share. Excluding the estimated after-tax impact of pretax items, including noncash unrealized gains and losses on hedges and share-based compensation expense, our second-quarter adjusted net income was $23.4 million or $0.12 per diluted share, while first-quarter adjusted net income was $20.3 million or $0.10 per diluted share. We posted record second-quarter 2024 adjusted EBITDA of $66.4 million versus $62 million for the first quarter, which was a 7% increase. As Paul mentioned, during the second quarter, we invested $35.4 million in capital expenditures. This was below our guidance of $37 million to $42 million. The actual number of producing wells drilled and completed, 11 in total, was at the high end of guidance. The primary driver for lower CapEx was reduced well completion costs and drilling efficiencies. The combined result of record operating cash flow and lower-than-expected CapEx drove record adjusted free cash flow of $21.4 million for the second quarter versus $15.6 million for the first quarter. In addition, we generated record year-to-date adjusted free cash flow of $37 million that was 60% higher than the same period in 2023. We used our record excess cash flow to pay down $50 million of borrowings on our revolver in the second quarter and $48 million since the closing of the Founders acquisition in late August. The difference between our adjusted free cash flow and the debt pay down was due to working capital changes, including a $9.1 million decrease in accounts payable quarter to quarter. As I mentioned in the beginning of my comments, further balance sheet improvement through additional debt pay down remains a top priority for the company. Moving to our hedge position. For the last six months of 2024, we currently have approximately 1.2 million barrels of oil hedged or approximately 49% of our estimated oil sales based on the midpoint of our revised guidance. We also have 1.2 Bcf of natural gas hedged or approximately 38% of our estimated natural gas sales based on the midpoint. For a quarterly breakout of our hedge positions for Q3 and Q4 of 2024, please see our earnings release and presentation, which includes the average price for each contract type. Now let's turn to the balance sheet in some more detail. At June 30, we had $407 million drawn on our credit facility. With the current borrowing base of $600 million, we had $192.9 million available net of letters of credit. Combined with cash, we had liquidity of $194.1 million with a leverage ratio of 1.59x. Looking at our outlook and guidance. For the second half of 2024, we will continue to utilize a drilling program that maintains our flexibility to react to changing market conditions, adjust spending levels as appropriate as well as manage our cash flows quarter-to-quarter. Our focus is on maintaining or slightly growing BOE per day production levels while continuing to grow crude oil sales. Our average daily sales volume guidance for full-year 2024 has been increased for the previous, including crude oil sales volumes of 13,200 to 13,800 barrels of oil per day and BOE sales volumes of 19,000 to 19,800 BOE per day at 70% oil. For the third quarter, we are providing a sales outlook of crude oil sales volumes of 13,200 to 13,800 barrels of oil per day and BOE sales volumes of 19,000 to 19,800 BOEs per day at 70% oil. Those who are still paying attention probably have noticed that our third-quarter and full-year production guidance mirror each other and reflect a midpoint that is similar to where we ended the first half of 2024. For CapEx, we now expect to spend $141 million to $161 million on our full-year development plan, which is 3% lower at the midpoint to our previous full-year guidance. In addition, we are providing an estimate of between $35 million to $45 million for the third quarter. We now anticipate full-year 2024 LOE of $10.50 to $11.25 per BOE and are providing guidance of $10.50 to $11.25 per BOE for the third quarter of 2024. Finally, I would note that all projects and estimates are based on assumed WTI oil prices of $70 to $90 per barrel and Henry Hub prices of $2 to $3 per Mcf.

Paul McKinney, Chairman and CEO

Thank you, Travis. Similar to the first quarter, we view our operational and financial success during the second quarter as a direct reflection of the merits of our proven and disciplined strategy designed to maximize free cash flow generation, further improve the balance sheet, properly grow the business, and ultimately provide a sustainable return of capital to stockholders. In short, we are executing a plan that we believe generates sustainable value and is in the best interest of our stockholders. Having said that, I want to address in my closing comments several key questions related to our strategy that we continue to hear from our institutional and individual stockholders. Perhaps the most common question appears to be regarding our commitment to paying down debt. As I have stated previously, we are focused on reducing our absolute debt levels, and our goal is to make material progress in this regard in the future, depending on oil prices and other factors that affect our ability to do so. However, there are opportunities for growth that may require increases in the absolute debt levels that can have a material benefit to our stockholders. I am referring to opportunities to grow through strategic and accretive acquisitions. Regarding the debt that we could incur associated with a potential acquisition, you have heard me say in the past that we intend any future acquisitions, in addition to being accretive to our stockholders, to be balance sheet enhancing. We have also said that if they are not balance sheet enhancing, we will attempt to keep the deal as close to being balance sheet neutral as we can with clear sight to the paydown of the debt incurred. Two examples of how our intentions in this regard have panned out in the past are the acquisitions we closed during the last two years, the Stronghold acquisition and the Founders acquisition. Let's look at the details of those transactions, specifically regarding their impact on our balance sheet and our leverage ratio. If you recall, we structured the finances of the Stronghold acquisition with a mixture of debt, equity, a deferred cash payment, and innovation of their hedge position. The result of that extremely accretive deal was that our leverage ratio went from 3.5 times our trailing 12 months EBITDA to 1.4 times, greatly enhancing our balance sheet. When considering the Founders acquisition and the impact that deal had on our balance sheet, we drew down the funds necessary to purchase those assets from our credit facility. So the deal increased our absolute debt. However, we structured the deal and took advantage of several attributes of the assets to position the transaction so that it was essentially balance sheet neutral from a leverage ratio perspective. Let me explain. First, we took advantage of the cash flow from the high cash flow in assets to help reduce the amount we had to draw down on the credit facility at closing. We paid $75 million for the assets with an effective date of April 1, 2023. The cash flow from the assets from the effective date until closing on August 15, 2023, reduced the amount owed to $62 million. Part of the closing obligation was deferred for months in the form of a deferred payment of $15 million, reducing the draw against the credit facility at the closing even more. The next thing we included in that deal was the ability to apply post-closed adjustments to the deferred payment. Instead of paying the $15 million as originally planned, we paid $11.9 million. And if you recall, we did not have to draw the $11.9 million against the credit facility because the company's cash flow during the quarter was sufficient to cover the deferred payment and pay down debt. After including the trailing 12 months EBITDA from the acquired assets, the deal was essentially balance sheet neutral from a leverage ratio perspective when not including the deferred payment. Since closing, we have paid down $48 million of the debt incurred and are on track to pay off the entire amount very soon, hopefully by the end of this quarter if oil prices return to recent levels. So the bottom line is this: we incurred additional debt from the Founders deal, but it was essentially balance sheet neutral from a leverage ratio perspective. We had and still have a very clear sight to a rapid paydown of the debt incurred. The benefits to the stockholders are that after the debt is paid off, we will have approximately an additional 2,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day of production or more to accelerate the repayment of the remaining debt. Another question we often get is regarding our stock price and what many have identified as a disconnect between our operational financial performance and our stock price performance. As you know, there are numerous factors that affect stock price performance, and investors and industry commentators have shared with us the issues they believe are having the largest impact. I don't plan to speculate in this regard or try to force rank which are the most important or whether some of them are truly affecting our stock price. But what I will do is share the things we are doing to help improve our stock price performance. First, we don't believe a large enough cross-section of the investment community knows about Ring Energy. We also don't believe many are educated about our assets in the Northwest Shelf and the Central Basin Platform and what makes them different from the assets they typically know about in the Delaware and the Midland Basins. We also believe there is more we can do to educate the investment community about our strategy and the aspects of Ring that make us differ from other public oil and gas investment opportunities. To help with all of this, we are stepping up our communication strategy by participating in more industry events and conferences to educate and tell our story. We are also scheduling more non-deal roadshows, both in person and virtually, with potential institutional investors, lenders, and a broader cross-section of the banking and investment banking communities, all with hopes of attracting long-term institutional investors. Another related thing we are trying to do is attract more analyst coverage. We have and continue to meet with analysts that for one reason or another have not yet initiated coverage on us. Our efforts to date have been focused on understanding their requirements and positioning the company to meet those requirements. Last but certainly not least is our debt. We are focused on improving our balance sheet and absolute debt levels. We believe making material progress in this regard can have a positive impact on value creation. We are targeting getting our leverage ratio comfortably below 1x and believe that it is a realistic and achievable goal. To sum up, we believe our value-focused proven strategy better prepares the company to manage the industry risks and uncertainties, results in generation of sustainable and competitive returns, and supports our efforts to achieve the necessary business size and scale to position Ring to sustainably return capital to stockholders. We also believe staying the course with our strategy will ultimately deliver growth and competitive returns despite the continuing volatility we endure in our industry. I want to thank all of you for your interest in Ring Energy and for participating in our call today. I also want to thank our stockholders for their continued support and trust. And with that, we will turn this call over to the operator for questions.

Operator, Operator

The first question comes from Neal Dingmann with Truist.

Neal Dingmann, Analyst

Good morning, guys. Paul and team, my first question is on your inventory. Specifically, guys, looking at that slide 26, no doubt you all continue to put up some days vertical and horizontal wells in the platform as well as in the shelf and even the recompletion activity. So I guess what I'm wondering here is can you remind me majority of this year sort of going forward the remainder and even into next year, where you're thinking about the capital you allocated maybe just talk about inventory depth? Because it's interesting to me on all the vertical horizontal potential as well as the refrac potential.

Paul McKinney, Chairman and CEO

Yes, very good. Those are good questions. We like the allocation mix that we currently have. And we've talked about this in the past. Our allocation strategy really in terms of how we allocate capital is based on two things. Number one, cash flow generation is the first consideration. But the other thing is managing infrastructure constraints where we have the saltwater disposal capacity, whether there are electrical constraints, and whether there's enough fresh water or water we can use with frac jobs; all of these types of constraints go into planning. All of that works together to maximize cash flow generation. And so the allocation between horizontals and the verticals: the horizontals tend to generate larger producing volumes and also higher net present value. But the mix with the verticals, they have very rapid payback, and many of the vertical areas have higher oil percentages. So we're also focused on that. And so getting back to the depth of the inventory, I've said, and I'll say it again, we have a really solid short-to-medium-term inventory to keep us going for the next several years. However, we don't have the luxury that many of the other companies have, especially those in the Delaware and Midland Basins, of a big 15- to 20-year inventory. So that's the reason why we're so focused on acquisitions. And we believe, though, that in the area that we're focused, there's plenty of opportunities to continue to fill the hopper so we can continue to deliver the types of returns. Now the other thing that's going on that we haven't really talked much about, and I think you'll hear us talk more about this as we go into the future is that we're now at the point where we're testing ideas on our existing acreage that could organically generate additional drilling opportunities. Some of these will be verticals, and some of these will be horizontal. So there is a little sprinkle of capital allocation towards these higher-risk tests. But the benefit of that is we could significantly improve our inventory and do that organically. That's a lot better than going out and acquiring undeveloped opportunities for acquisitions. So that's kind of what we can see for us moving on in the future. I hope that answered your question, Neal.

Neal Dingmann, Analyst

It certainly did. What you said relates to my second question regarding the upcoming conventional M&A opportunities. It seems to me there are several interesting packages already available, and it appears that more may be entering the market. I am curious about your perspective on this and whether you have heard similar things. Additionally, what restrictions do you face when considering these deals?

Paul McKinney, Chairman and CEO

Yes. And so you heard us say in the past that we believe that the activity of the larger organizations in our industry as they consolidate in the Midland and Delaware that they would want to help pay down or off and reduce our leverage associated with those deals by selling what they consider non-core assets, assets where they have not historically allocated a lot of capital. And so it's proven out to be true. As you know, and I'm not going to name any of these, but there are several packages out there on the street. We do hear, like you have, that we believe there are more packages that are going to hit the street over the next couple of years. We've said this in the past; we believe that the number of opportunities that will hit the street will exceed our ability to take them all down. And several of these we've been mapping and looking at for quite some time. Some of these we've actually approached to try to initiate a negotiated deal. We haven't been successful in that regard all of the time. But yes, we're very interested. Currently, we are focused in the very areas that we currently operate, again, because we can capture the synergies associated with spreading our operating team over more wells and more production. This is an area that we know very well, and it's an area that we'll be concentrating on. Our geoscience teams have been mapping and identifying undeveloped opportunities that reside under other people's acreage. And so we're actually very excited about what we're seeing play out. In some regards, we're kind of hoping that maybe these acquisition opportunities will hit the market a little bit more spread out so that we have a better chance of capturing them. Some of them are coming in so fast that we will have to let one or two of them go just simply because we can't take it all in.

Alexander Dyes, Executive VP of Engineering and Corporate Strategy

If I may, this is Alex. We created specifically a slide for this question, slide 15. And this should give some of the analysts and just the investment community, it's our acquisition strategy and backs up everything Paul just covered.

Paul McKinney, Chairman and CEO

Yes. If you refer to that slide, you'll see that the potential acquisition opportunities in our focus area amount to over 480,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day in production. This presents a significant target for a company of our size. It's evident that we can't capture all of this, but it clearly illustrates the real opportunities that lie ahead of us.

John White, Analyst

Congratulations on a strong quarter and on your increased production guidance. So to be clear, you have not announced an increase in CapEx, right?

Paul McKinney, Chairman and CEO

No, we have not. The guidance for our CapEx that we have provided for the rest of the year does represent, if you consider just the midpoint, a slight reduction in our capital spending. Again, we are enjoying a time period in the macro environment where the drilling activity in the Permian Basin has not increased; it has actually been holding flat or slightly down a little bit. And so in my opinion, the oilfield services industry is designed to operate at a higher activity level than we currently are. And so as a result, we're not seeing pressures, the inflationary pressures on the increase in cost. Actually, they're slightly coming down. And so we're taking advantage of that. We believe that for the rest of the year, unless something changes, we can enjoy that; we'll see quite a bit of savings. Now we're still targeting essentially the same number of wells. We're just saying that we can now drill them and complete them and bring them online for less money than we originally estimated.

Alexander Dyes, Executive VP of Engineering and Corporate Strategy

And John, there's actually a slide, slide 6, that describes exactly what Paul is talking about. And comparing the original guidance that we provided at the beginning of the year compared to the updated guidance, the midpoint of the 3% reduction.

Jeffrey Grampp, Analyst

Questions on the capital side for you. Obviously, really nice performance thus far in the first half of the year. I think you probably averaged something in the neighborhood of like $35 million a quarter. Activity levels in the back half of the year, some will be similar to the first half, but CapEx is probably going to be more like the $40 million a quarter range. So I was just wondering, is that just general conservatism there on your part? Or if there's any perhaps specific reasons why capital might creep a little bit higher in the back half versus the first half, given the consistency in your activity levels?

Paul McKinney, Chairman and CEO

Yes. It's actually a combination of a couple of things. Our estimates probably are a little high versus the inflationary pressures we are seeing, kind of going back to the question we just had with John White. But at the same time, and I don't mind sharing this because of the success we've had in the first half and because of the success of the ongoing programs we've budgeted for the year, we're also allocating a little bit of capital towards more risky investments that could potentially prove up significant additional reserves organically. And so that's really what represents a higher end. Shawn, I don't know if you've got more you can add to that.

Shawn Young, VP of Operations

Yes. Again, if you do look at slide number 6 and the guidance we've provided there, there is a little bit of an increase in activity. And as Paul mentioned, we do have a few more wells that we do plan to drill in the fourth quarter. And so that's the majority of that incremental CapEx that you're seeing.

Paul McKinney, Chairman and CEO

I think we're also going to increase our spending on some of our facility upgrades, which includes capturing emissions and similar initiatives. Therefore, there are a few additional capital costs we have decided to incorporate. We believe our guidance range is fairly accurate. I would prefer to come in under it, but if that happens, it will likely be due to industry inflation while the macro environment continues to improve.

Jeffrey Grampp, Analyst

Understood. And my follow-up, you guys have a slide kind of noting a bit of the well cost reductions towards the back end of the deck, I believe. Should we think about those as being mostly kind of near-term and maybe more transitory related to softness in the overall OFS market? Or are there some more kind of Ring-specific internal efficiencies where maybe some of those cost reductions capture a little bit more permanent, if you will?

Paul McKinney, Chairman and CEO

That's kind of hard to predict. I'm going to turn this over to Shawn, but it's really hard to predict because we assume the same level of efficiency when we're drilling and completing the wells. And I have to turn my hats off to my drilling department because they continue to improve their efficiencies beyond what our assumptions were. So Shawn, you got more to say there?

Shawn Young, VP of Operations

Yes. Just to add a little color there. We are seeing some improvements in our overall efficiencies on the drilling side and the completion side where we are just driving out costs by being faster and more efficient. And so yes, there is a component of that that is just the overall relaxation in the prices of the service industry. But there's definitely some that we are going to be able to realize going forward just from the performance of our drilling team and completion team.

Jeffrey Robertson, Analyst

Thank you. Paul, production this year seems to have benefited from two things; one is performance on the wells you drilled, but also a lot of the field-level steps Ring has taken to either increase run times or deal with large disposal and things like that. Is a lot of the heavy lifting on the field operations with respect to the Founders acquisition or the existing asset base done? Or do you see further opportunity to enhance production just by better field-level operations?

Shawn Young, VP of Operations

Yes. This is Shawn. I'll take a stab at that one. Yes, I think there's always room for improvement. And as we continue to have more time in the saddle with these acquisitions, we do expect that we'll continue to see some improvement. But we are seeing it in our other assets as well, not just the newly acquired properties, just with some of the bottom hole assemblies and things that we've incorporated in our rod designs and artificial lift designs and have really started to make an impact. And so you're able to see that in the numbers now.

Jeffrey Robertson, Analyst

Paul, on the case study you talked about for the Founders acquisition, does the type of asset include a pretty heavy PDP base? One of your slides points out that your corporate decline curve is a lot less than some of the peers who are probably more focused on unconventional assets? And in those types of deals, are you able to pick up inventory at a relatively low cost because of the conventional nature?

Paul McKinney, Chairman and CEO

Yes. It's actually the conventional nature tends to reduce the competition for those opportunities. And so I will say this: If you look at what's out there in the marketplace today for sale, there's a mix of acquisition targets that bring with them quite a few undeveloped opportunities based on our mapping and analysis. There are also opportunities out there to pick up acreage that may be more closely to fully or almost fully developed, so there's not as many; that would be more considered a PDP buy. Each one of these acquisition opportunities brings different virtues that we consider, some of them are very beneficial to the company. So we look at all of these things. And so it's kind of hard to predict. And at the same time, you always got to consider you have a low chance of capture for any one of these acquisition opportunities. And so you do the best you can and compete the best you can. You don't want to overpay but all of these things have various different virtues that could actually enhance the value for our shareholders. And so we look at all of that.

Jeffrey Robertson, Analyst

If I could slip one more in. Paul, you talked about some higher-risk opportunities in the drilling program. Is that applying new technology to known reservoirs or new technology or reservoirs that may not have been commercial in the past?

Paul McKinney, Chairman and CEO

The answer is yes. It's challenging to explain everything, but as we progress in one area, we learn what works and what doesn’t. Our geologists continue to examine both our existing acreage and areas we don't currently hold. They analyze logs and evidence from prior exploration and start to question why certain areas haven't been developed yet. Some of these opportunities are viewed as slightly higher risk. However, when we assess the data about the rocks and the oil they contain, we realize that many of these areas remain undeveloped simply because they haven't been explored. While we label them as higher risk, they may not ultimately be so. We're looking at this type of opportunity and leveraging the advantages on the opposite side while also exploring our own acreage for horizontal drilling in regions where it hasn't been utilized yet. We're genuinely enthusiastic about this. We believe the opportunities within our existing acreage can be quite significant. I'm pleased to share that we are developing our team further. Our geoscience team is performing more functions than merely guiding the drill bit for our horizontal wells and evaluating our acreage; we are now generating new ideas to foster organic growth beyond just acquisitions.

Operator, Operator

Seeing no further questions, this will conclude our Q&A session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Paul McKinney for any closing remarks.

Paul McKinney, Chairman and CEO

Thank you, Nick. On behalf of the management team and Board of Directors, I want to once again thank you, everyone, for listening and participating in today's call. We are pleased to have posted record operational and financial results to date for 2024 and are looking forward to the remainder of the year, which we believe remains strong. We will continue to keep everyone apprised of our progress. And again, I'd like to thank you for your interest in Ring Energy. Have a great day.

Operator, Operator

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.