Hello, and welcome to the Viper Energy First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand has been raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce Director of Investor Relations, Chip Seal.

26 conference call. During our call today, from those that are indicated in these certain non-GAAP measures, the reconciliations with the appropriate GAAP measures can be found in our earnings release issued yesterday afternoon. I will now turn the call over to Kate. remainder of 2026.

The Midland and Delaware Basin organic growth royalty acres per day, existing acreage, and further increase our exposure to high-quality third-party per shared dividend, 25% of cash, designed to be both disciplined and flexible to fit the needs of our business of net debt. Deep inventory position and alignment with Diamondback support durable organic growth and strong free cash flow generation. Well positioned to deliver for shared growth and attractive long-term stockholder return.

Certainly. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again.

One moment, please.

Our first question comes from the line of Greta Drefke with Goldman Sachs.

Good morning, team, and thank you for taking my questions. First off, I was just wondering if you could speak to the number of scale of remaining Permian pure plate packages available that Viper could potentially consolidate over time. Do you expect Viper's consolidation strategy to be the roll-up of smaller positions, or are there positions with meaningful scale that Viper could evaluate over time?

Hey Greta, thanks for the question. I think it's going to be both. This deal with Riverbend, kind of the first deal, I think it's a nice tuck-in acquisition, and we can execute on these very same opportunity size or opportunity set done in this market, I would say. But as we showed yesterday, there are ways for buyers and sellers to come together with the volatility to still get deals done.

So the opportunity set both position ourselves to be, you know, the buyer of choice, you know, a deal like.

Great. That's very helpful. And then for a second question, I just wanted to follow up a bit more on Riverbend specifically. You outlined that about 75% of the asset base overlaps with Vipers' existing assets, but I was wondering if you could provide any more detail on the quality and or geological differences of the other 25% relative to Vipers' position.

Yeah, so the Midland Basin is going to be a diamond bag in the Reagan area, and a lot of undeveloped acreage, particularly under Exxon, so I would say that looks a lot like Vipers' dust today. The Delaware, the Texas Dental assets under permanent resources, for example, I would say what's different is probably some of the New Mexico assets, and that's the exposure that we outlined under Conoco, Oxy, and EOG. So it gets a lot of what we like in the Midland Basin and gets kind of some new exciting exposure and historically hasn't had a huge presence in.

Great. Thank you.

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Betty Zhang with Barclays.

Good morning again. So I want to ask about capital allocation, given Diamondback is taking a more opportunistic approach on buyback. So can you speak to the capital allocation process decision-making for Viper in terms of both percentage of free cash flow being returned and the allocation of that cash return in the form of buyback versus variable dividend?

Yeah, Betty, good question given the position of the business.

That makes sense. My follow-up is actually something that you mentioned on the Diamondback call on this resource recovery that we are on the cusp of a technical breakthrough that we could see resource recovery increasing in the Permian. Clearly, that's beneficial for Viper. Maybe just speak to, are you seeing any, where are you seeing the productivity trends across Midland and Delaware, and whether how that potentially higher resource recovery could help to drive Viper production growth in the future down the road as well? yeah well listen this is a concrete examples today great helpful thank you thank you and our

next question comes from the line of neil dingman with william blair hey case my first question just on production guide besides the the boost in diamondback could you just talk about what other sort of upside and third-party activity you're assuming yeah i mean i'll give the

conversion and biggest driver as you think how it impacts the next six months so we're We're watching and monitoring things as they evolve, and we expect some things to come our way. But while we haven't fully baked in, you know, the acceleration benefits from Thursday.

Thanks, Austin. And then just secondly, just on the M&A side, Taze, I'm wondering, is, you know, after the – what was it? I forget, earlier this year, the prior sale, are you holding much that your Austin now would consider non-core at this time? Perfect.

Thank you. So, our next question comes from the line of Paul Diamond with Citi.

Thank you all. Thanks for taking the call. Just a quick touch on Post River Bend and the M&A outlook. I think you guys talked about the availability of deals. But I guess, how has recent volatility really impacted the bid asks at the deals of different sizes? Are you seeing a bit more convergence of those large deals, which Riverview is an example of? Or is what you've seen on the volatility of the bid asks there?

You know, I think, you know, what's interesting about that deal is a unique situation with the deal.

There's one quick piece on cleanup for housekeeping, I guess. Cash taxes, a bit of a run-up with recent pricing. I guess at what point do you guys see it still, like a 27, 28, where things kind of settle down, like run right out? Or is there, I guess, how much of its current volatility hold that date forward?

We still have the 20% income, kind of 21% statutory rate, and you're just getting gained higher on an income basis given you have a higher depletion rate from an income perspective than you do from a tax perspective. So first quarter taxes were higher as an absolute dollar amount than we got into just because income was up. But we kind of expect that 27% to 30% to be a pretty steady rate going forward.

Understood. Appreciate the clarity. I'll leave it back. Thank you.

And our next question comes from the line of Derek Whitfield with Texas Capital.

Good morning, guys, and thanks for your time again. Case, perhaps for you, I guess more broadly as you think about the green line environment for Diamondback, what degree of flexibility do you have in the development plan at Diamondback to lean more into the areas where Venom has higher NRIs for both 26 and 27? Great, that makes sense. And then maybe just more specific on 2026 guidance, is it fair to think about the cadence of growth beyond 2Q as a steady build of maybe $1,000 per quarter to get to the average of $65,500?

As we see things today, great update, guys.

Thanks for your time.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Leo Mariani with Ralph.

I just wanted to revisit the question of sort of, you know, variable dividend versus buyback. On the FAANG call, you guys were pretty clear that you wanted to take more of a counter-cyclical approach and we're well above mid-cycle oil prices, which we certainly probably likely are here today, that you would certainly lean more on paying down debt. Obviously, you don't really need to do that here at Venom. Should we be thinking about that similarly where at a higher mid-cycle oil price, you're much more likely to just push money to the variable dividend and the buyback could be a little bit more muted in the near term? Just any caller on that would be great.

Yeah, Leo, I think generally you're correct. In fact, you know, we're going to lean more towards cash returns at Viper.

It's, you know, you can opportunistically invest in the business, and then you can have targeted debt reductions, especially in times of higher commodity prices. And you don't have to sit around as much and wonder which of – when you look at your investment as a percentage of your operating cash flow, it's pretty low just given your margin.

Yeah, certainly makes sense. I wanted to jump back over to the riverbend, you know, deal here. So you kind of did a good job kind of talking about, you know, where the acreage was in terms of the key operators remaining there. You kind of made a bit of a high-level comment that, you know, some of the stuff under Exxon was a little bit more underdeveloped. I just wanted to get maybe a little sense of just kind of the overall flavor of the inventory there.

Is it going to be a little bit more geared towards the emerging zones, or is there still, you know, substantial, let's call it, you know, core kind of legacy zones, Wolf Camp A, Wolf Camp B, and whatever on the acreage so just any color there would be great yeah most of the value will come from your core zones being undeveloped um especially in new mexico and in the midland piece um if you kind of look at a map and you look at the midland glass top line kind of in that what we call the four corners area there um there's a big chunk of legacy pioneer now exxon completely undeveloped acreage that i think will be the primary acreage that supports the production profile over the coming years um but you know as you dig in and you think about some of the unquantified zones that we didn't have to pay for certainly you're getting the emergence of the and also the the woodford and the delaware kind of on the eastern edge of the delaware basin um getting pretty excited about that now so i think it's a good mix of existing production and also core undeveloped zones that you get the kind of unquantified upside to go along with it And that's kind of the beauty of the mineral business model.

Yeah, no, that makes sense. And then just to follow up there, so I know you gave some production numbers over the next 12 months, but just based on what you're describing, would you expect that if we kind of hang out at these oil prices that perhaps that production grows a bit over time? It sounds like there's enough inventory there to probably grow that individual piece.

Yeah, I think 27 probably grows, and it's got a couple years of slight growth. And then, you know, generally, if you zoom out and look over a 5- to 10-year period, it looks pretty flat, but it's probably higher than what the NTM production is.

Okay, thanks. Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Tim Redsman with KeyBank Capital Markets.

Good morning, folks. Some of mine have been answered, so I just had one for you. We were a little surprised that, you know, the Vipers sale earlier this year was mostly diamondback selling and not as many unnaturals. So, you know, that overhang is still out there a bit. I'm just curious, is there a price at which you potentially wouldn't participate if some of these unnatural holders come to market? Or how do you think about, you know, kind of dampening volatility should they look to sell because shares are, you know, back up to about $50? Thanks. Okay, I appreciate the comment. If I could take a quick follow-up. You gave some comments, Austin, on sort of the M&A outlook. We've heard from some minerals peers that, you know, all else equal, a higher strip is bringing sellers to market. So are you seeing that dynamic as well, or are you facing a different dynamic because you're sort of elephant hunting with a couple of the very large packages out there? Thanks.

We engage in our ground game, And you would think surely as a result of where oil prices have moved. So we've seen it there on the smaller deals. And then we've also seen it, you know, Case was mentioning before, that the phones are definitely ringing on some of these mid to larger packages. I just can't predict yet today what the higher strip or what the volatility means in terms of it's going to be there. So it's just key for us to stay disciplined and, you know, under right deals where we can generate good returns. And, you know, I think if we do that, things will come our way over time.

Thank you. Thank you. I'll now hand the call back over to CEO Case Vant Hoff for closing remarks.

Thanks for your support.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating. This does conclude today's program, and you may now disconnect.