Infinity Natural achieves 39% production growth year over year, raises guidance for 2025 amid strong operational momentum and $75 million share buyback announcement.

Sam - Moderator - (00:00:51)

Sam Greetings and welcome to Infinity Natural third quarter 2025 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the prepared remarks. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Gregory Greg Pipkin, Senior Vice President, Corporate Development and Strategy. Sir, you may begin. Thank you Operator Good morning and thank you for joining our third quarter 2025 earnings results conference call. With me today are Zach Arnold, President and Chief Executive Officer, and David Sproul, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. In a moment, Zach and David will present their prepared remarks with a question and answer session to follow. An updated investor presentation has been posted to the investor Relations portion of our website and we may reference certain slides during today's discussion. A replay of today's call will be available on our website beginning this evening. I'd like to remind you that today's call may contain forward looking statements. All statements that are not historical facts are forward looking statements. Forward looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control that could cause actual results to materially differ from these forward looking statements. Please review our earnings release and the risk factors discussed in our SEC filings. We will also be referring to certain non GAAP financial measures. Please refer to our earnings release and investor presentation for important disclosures regarding such measures, including definitions and reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP financial measures. Now over to Zach. Thank you Greg and welcome to Infinity Natural third quarter 2025 earnings call. We're pleased to share our quarterly operational and financial performance with you today, along with an overview of our ongoing development program and our perspective on the remainder of 2025. Starting with the highlights from the third quarter, we delivered exceptional results that demonstrate our continued momentum across the Appalachian basin. We achieved 39% total production growth year over year to 36.0 Mboe per day during the quarter. This included 70% growth in natural gas production compared to the third quarter of 2024, reflecting our increased focus on natural gas development during 2025. Our continued execution is driving operational momentum. We have experienced strong results on our recent projects, including our best producing projects in each of Ohio and Pennsylvania to date. Most notably, we achieved a single day net production record of 47.9 mboe per day in October. This milestone reflects the consistent execution and commitment to operational excellence that has driven several new company records. Operationally, we had yet again a very strong quarter demonstrating our consistent execution throughout 2025. In total, we placed 10 wells into sales during the third quarter. Comprised of six oil weighted wells in the Ohio Utica and four natural gas wells in the Pennsylvania Marcellus, we drilled 93,000 lateral feet and completed 442 stages across six wells during the quarter. We continue to emphasize extended lateral development with an average well length of nearly 15,000ft during the quarter. On the drilling side, our team improved efficiencies on casing running speed, decreasing the average time by more than 25%. On the completion side, we set a new record for stages pumped in 24 hours on one of our projects in Guernsey county, exceeding 16 stages in a 24 hour period reflecting both the quality of our completions design and our team's operational expertise. On the strategic front, we continue to have success in the ground game acquiring approximately 3,000 net acres during the quarter across approximately 350 transactions, increasing working interest in our active development projects and enhancing future projects. These working interest additions are among the highest returning dollars we invest as we acquire more of each project we are already executing. Looking at our activity by state. In the Ohio utica, we drilled three wells and completed 377 stages during the quarter, all in Guernsey County. We also turned into sales a 57,000 foot three well pad early in October resulting in the first production from our Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District acquisition we made earlier this year. In the Pennsylvania Marcellus, we drilled three wells and completed 65 stages. Specifically, in July we began drilling operations on the 50,000 foot three well natural gas project that we elected to advance early in the second quarter. We are excited to announce that we plan to turn these wells to sales in the coming weeks representing approximately six months from FID to revenue generation. Taking a step back to look at 2025 as a whole, our team's execution and strong well performance has allowed us to increase our production guidance for full year 2025 to 33.5 to 35 mboe per day from 32 to 35 mboe per day. We are also updating our full year total development capital expenditure guidance to a range of 270 to $292 million which is inside the higher end of our combined DNC and midstream CAPEX guidance. We are on track to have turned to sales 23 wells this year, 12 natural gas weighted wells and 11 oil weighted wells. This nearly 5050 split is slightly more gas heavy than our expectations coming into the year, but demonstrates the unique optionality our strategic positioning in Appalachia provides with a balanced portfolio across oil weighted UTICA assets in Ohio and natural gas weighted assets in Pennsylvania. We can adapt to varying commodity price environments and execute projects that maximize shareholder returns. The operational momentum we've built throughout 2025, combined with our strategic asset positioning across both oil and natural gas assets, provides a solid foundation as we look ahead to 2026. The strength of our balance sheet remains an invaluable asset, and we will continue to be thorough and thoughtful as we evaluate organic and inorganic growth opportunities. With that, I'll turn the call over to David for a more detailed review of our financial results. Thank you, Zach. Our third quarter results speak directly to the operational and financial execution during the period. As Zach noted, we delivered a 39% increase in net production to 36 Mboe per day, year over year. Moreover, as noted earlier, our natural gas production increased 70% year over year to 138 mmcf per day for Q3 2025. We anticipate further production growth during the fourth quarter driven by additional turn in lines the period. While driving production growth. We also continued to drive cash operating costs lower the $6.09 per boe from $9.42 per boe in the prior year's quarter. As expected, our LOE and GPNT per unit metrics continued to decline as we bring on additional natural gas volumes in Pennsylvania. As always, we are focused on EBITDA generation and capital efficiency, delivering best in basin adjusted EBITDA margins and capital efficiency when compared to our Appalachian peers. We generated adjusted EBITDA of $60 million during the quarter and an adjusted EBITDA margin of $18.12 per boe, again a top tier result compared to our Appalachian peers. The the shift towards natural gas weighting continues to improve our operating cost structure while maintaining leading margins. We expect per unit costs will continue to decline as we accelerate Pennsylvania production on capital deployment. We invested 95 million into our business during the quarter, comprised of $83.2 million in development capital expenditures and 11.8 million in land acquisitions. Again, we anticipate capital spend to decline in the fourth quarter. As Zach noted, our land acquisition strategy continues to deliver Results with approximately 3,000 net acres added during the third quarter and approximately 4,300 net acres acquired year to date. What makes these acquisitions particularly valuable to infinity is that they increase our working interest in ongoing development projects while expanding our future drilling inventory. From a practical standpoint, the increase in working interest on development wells has effectively added approximately one net well to our 2025 development program. Our development capital spend for the calendar year is anticipated to be within our prior 2025 guidance. This represents more value for investors at the same spend. Turning to the balance sheet, our leverage profile remains exceptionally Strong with approximately $71 million in net debt. On October 1, we expanded our borrowing base yet again to $375 million, providing us with $304 million in liquidity. Turning to 2025 guidance, we are raising our full year net daily production guidance to 33.5 to 35 per day, from 32 to 35 MBoe per day. This is driven by strong well performance and operational successes across our portfolio. We are updating our full year total development capital expenditure guidance to a range of 270 to 292 million. Inside the higher end of our previous combined DNC and Midstream CapEx guidance 249 to 292 million. Again, we are inside the 2025 CapEx guidance while delivering more net wells for our investors. Lastly, our Board of Directors has authorized a $75 million share repurchase program reflecting confidence in our underlying long term value for our business, the strength of our balance sheet and the undervalued nature of our stock price relative to our performance. With that, over to Zach to close out our opening remarks. Thanks, David. To wrap up our third quarter results reflect the strength and strategic value of our diversified Appalachian operations. Our success this quarter highlights what makes Infinity Natural unique. Our proven ability to optimize development across both our Ohio Utica oil properties and our Pennsylvania Marcellus natural gas assets. We demonstrated this flexibility by successfully executing our accelerated natural gas program while maintaining strong momentum on our oil development, positioning us to turn in line 23 wells in 2025. With a near 5050 gas to oil production split. We are exceptionally well positioned to sustain our active development pace into 2026 while continuing to deliver strong returns for our shareholders. Operator, you may now open up to Q and A. Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press Star one in your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your questions, simply press Star one again. Your first question today comes from the line of Tim Resmon from Keybanc Capital Markets. Your line is open. Good morning guys. Thank you for taking my question questions. First one to dig in. You know, with natural gas looking more attractive, I know you've sort of pushed back plans to test the deep Utica to 2026. You know, there's been strong comments from public peers. Can you talk about any plans you may have to test that into what's looking like a stronger natural gas price environment. Sure. Thanks, Tim. I'll take that question. This is Zachary. We haven't announced anything specific to the development plan of the Deep Dry Gas Utica and we haven't given any guidance on our 2026 development program at all. So as we continue to plan that that will be a part of our development of that plan, we are always evaluating what other operators are doing and we think there's continued momentum for the Deep Dry Gas Utica in our South Bend area. We're excited about that. It is important to remember that when we drill our first Deep Dry Gas Utica well, it'll be just one well of many spuds in that year and we'll be excited about it as we are excited about every project we develop. Okay. Okay, that's fair. We'll stay tuned. And then I just wanted to dig in, make sure I heard you correctly, Zach. You said that 3,000 net acres that you added. I believe you said that's 350 transactions. So I don't know if I heard that correctly, but you know, you've added 4300 year to date. Can you talk to kind of what the ground game, how that's evolving and I know it may be a little more challenging time to pursue sort of larger opportunities, but you talk about, you know, maybe how that's progressing and how you see that into next year. Thank you. Great question. And I want to maintain the statement that we are focused on both the ground game and larger scale transactions. But to answer your ground game question, we added 3,000 acres over the 350 transactions. I think that's an incredible testament to our team's ability to stay focused in areas where we see value. I think we have a strategic advantage by being located in the basin that gives us a unique opportunity to be in the neighborhoods and in the communities as we, as we go out and talk to folks. Those transactions that we closed in, those acres that we added added additional working interest to projects that are incredibly meaningful to us. So projects that we're already developing at the back half of this year, we were able to increase our working interest due to the work that folks did. So really excited about that work and we'll keep doing those ground game attacks in both areas in Ohio and in Pennsylvania and we'll keep looking at the larger scale. M and A Olson, thank you. Your next question comes from the line of John Freeman from Raymond James. Your line is open. Good morning, guys. Nice to see the share repurchase plan especially at These valuations just maybe how you all think about the trade off between share buybacks versus continued kind of ground game acquisitions. Yeah. Hey John, this is David. I'll take that one. I think there's a couple points on that. I think first and foremost the share buyback will not impact our asset development or acquisition strategies at all. I think that's very much a testament to the team and the capabilities that we have and the assets that we're developing here. The second thing I'd say is, you know, the share price is significantly undervalued and we're being opportunistic here given our long term view of the business and our focus on allocating capital and maximize shareholder returns at every step. And so it's a, it's a good opportunity for us and we're excited about executing that alongside of all the other assets that we're developing. Got it. And then my follow up question. It looks like the amount of natural gas hedges kind of went down each quarter going forward. Maybe. Can you just speak to that decision? Yeah, you know, we've been pretty well hedged on natural gas. The decline there on natural gas hedges as a percent. Is that your question, John? As a percentage of total air natural gas bought. It looked like, David, that the absolute like volume amount that y' all had hedged versus yalls prior update had gone down the rest of 3Q 4Q and then also for full year 26. Like just the actual volumes that you all have gas hedges on. It looked like that went down. Sure. We can circle back with you. I think first and foremost we're pretty well hedged on natural gas through 2025 as you, as you guys can see. I think the change in our percentage hedging is continued to highlight the strong well performance that we're having in Pennsylvania. But our strategy overall is with regards to hedges, as we've kind of talked about at length before, is to really look at this kind of return on investment that we get on these projects and lock in some of those at an fid and then, and then we have sort of uptick those when we have a completion crews come. We'll continue to execute on that plan there. But we're pretty well hedged through 2025 in particular on natural gas and then have great exposure to natural gas uptick in the coming years. Thanks, David. Nice quarter, guys. Thank you. Your next question comes from a line of Scott Hannell from rbc. Your line is open. Yeah, thanks. I appreciate the, the fact that it's probably too early for 2026 guidance. But I don't know, Zach, could you kind of frame it up for us a little bit? Like, should we think about this kind of one to one and a half rig pace you ran this year is a reasonable kind of trajectory in how you think about oil versus gas mix in general and just help us frame up for what that means on the capital side too, with the development efficiencies and everything else you're seeing. Sure. So I'll start by saying we aren't giving soft guidance yet for what 2026 will look like. We will provide guidance in Q1 to let everybody understand how we're approaching next year in our capital allocation and our base of business. So to kind of back up from that and just kind of give some framework for folks to be able to think about what our business could look like. Though, as we still formulate all of our development plans and we ran 1.2 rigs in 2025, I think you should expect that we remain at least that active in 2026. We aren't providing splits to our capital allocation right now between gas or oil, but we have very attractive returns in both commodities and I would expect us to be active in both states next year. Okay, got that in. And then just to clarify too, I think you said y' all reached like 47.9 mboe per day in October. Just could you clarify that? Was that a peak rate or was that an average? I'm just. Just help me kind of square the circle with, you know, I think you said you expect to see some growth, you know, through the fourth quarter. I think guiding some for something on 43 a day. If you were up. We're on 48. Just kind of help us like walk through the timing that tills and natural declines coming off of some of the, you know, the pads you've done. Sure. So specifically that number was a daily spot rate that we reported there. We have six wells that we will be turning in line this quarter. Three of them have already happened. That number corresponded with those wells coming online. We have three additional gas wells that will come online here in, in pretty, pretty fresh time here in the next couple of weeks. So we don't give quarterly production guidance. So it doesn't. So I can't really help you specifically get to what this quarter is going to be, but I just point you back to the, the production range that we set and I think those productions. Sorry, I was just going to make a comment that we've been very happy with our recent well performance too. And that, that helps us hit those, those production records as we go. Yeah. And just to clarify, am I correct though the Implied kind of 4Q guidance is around 43ish? Somewhere around there that, you know, if I take your full year or less, what you've done here today. Yeah, I don't know. You know, we don't have a specific quarter number because we haven't necessarily spoken about that. But I would just keep you thinking about how the 33.5 to 35 represents our view of production for the year. Got it, thanks. Your next question comes from a line of Michael Ciella from Stevens. Your line is open. Good morning. Wanted to ask on your DNC CapEx guide for the year, you took that up at the midpoint a bit. Just want to see how well costs and the pace of development are trending versus your prior expectations. You know, I think a couple things there, you know, we've been really happy and proud of our operational team. They have not only delivered this year, but they've delivered in an expedient fashion. You're kind of seeing some of that come through, you know, with the numbers there. Obviously tariffs affect things, but I would tell you that our dollar per foot basis here is great and actually tracking extremely well to what we anticipated back in March. I think some of the things that you're seeing with a higher level of spend is reflecting a couple crops. One is, you know, Zach alluded to this in his comments that we've added additional acreage and working interest and we kind of noted it in the prepared remarks that we, that we provided. We've effectively added an additional wealth in that. So as you think about an additional well for us is a 15,000 foot lateral. It's a pretty impactful benefit to us from an economic perspective, but also kind of does affect the overall spend. The second thing is we have pulled forward some of those natural gas projects and have spent some money to Prepare us for 2026 with regards to our infrastructure aspect. So you're seeing both of those kind of manifest here. But again, we're delivering better results. We're delivering more effective net wells at the same spend. Sounds good. And I know you had some midstream constraints that you talked about last quarter. At this point, are you running into any kind of constraints, midstream or otherwise, that could impact your operations going forward? No, no midstream constraints. We're really excited about the midstream that we're building out on our own for gas assets, as David talked about. Spend money there, preparing for this Year's gas volumes and next year's gas volumes. So well positioned. There's. And our near term development in Ohio is all from pads that are tied into pipeline already. So no anticipated mission issues at all. Great, thank you. Your next question comes from Alaina. Paul diamond from Citi. Your line is open. Thank you. Good morning. Thanks for taking the call. Just wanted to touch back on the share buyback and it's kind of the strategy around execution. I mean you stated you think the shares are undervalued. I guess. At what point would you mean further in? Is there a marker you have out there or is it just more relative val or against an internal model? Just how to think about the pace and timing of that, I guess. Yeah. Hey Paul, this is David. I think first and foremost, I don't think it's surprising to anybody listening on this call that we think that our shares are undervalued. I don't think we're going to give today any view of where we would opportunistically utilize our buyback authorization, if you will, at this stage. But we obviously are really happy and excited about the business that we have, the long term generation of cash that we anticipate here and think that the shares are significantly undervalued and we're just going to be opportunistic about rolling them, rolling them back into the company. Got it. Makes perfect sense. And then since IPO early this year and kind of as you really commenced on that one to one and a half drill pace, you talk about anything that might have, you know, on the other, the upside or the downside surprised you about, well, results versus the original expectations, you know, the decline rates in line, the IP zors, all that stuff. You know, I think it's important to note that we've been incredibly spot on with our budgeting of these projects from, from a capex perspective and a production perspective, we've been very pleased with the team's ability to predict and forecast the what these wells are going to do. We are really happy with a couple of the recent projects that are outperforming our base type curve assumptions. So those are always nice to have those surprises to the positive. But I'll compliment the team that they've done a tremendous job in preparing for the IPO and executing this year at planning our business and putting out a budget that we can meet. Got it? Understood. Appreciate the time. I'll leave it there. Again, if you have a question, press star 1 in your telephone keypad. Your next question comes from a line of Nicholas Pope from Roth Capital. Your line is open. Good morning, guys. Morning. Another question about the share repurchase. I was just curious, and in the release, you know, the comment is that it's for Class A shares. I was curious if there was a mechanism for conversion of the Class B shares to be a part of the share repurchase, or is that. Do they need to be completely separated in kind of the approval process? I think. Hey, Nick, this is David. I think first and foremost, our investors, our legacy investors, I should say, are really bullish on this story for us. And so I don't think you should anticipate any of that anytime soon. I think with regards to the share repurchase, the program is targeted in and around the Class A shares. Those are the economic shares that are trading. Obviously, we have about 15.6 million shares that are trading. I think it's important to note at yesterday's close of roughly 1150, that would be in the execution of a $75 million share repurchase program that would effectively claw back or repurchase north of 40% of the class A shares. So it's a pretty impactful share repurchase program for us, but again, it's just targeted on the shares that are actively trading in the market today. Makes sense. Is there any, as you kind of look at that share repurchase and kind of how things are going to progress going forward, is it primarily going to be focused on, like, the free cash flow that the company's generating? I just want to make sure it's not. Anything is like, as you're going through the development process or spending development capital, that this isn't something that's going to increase debt like that. It's mostly going to be coming from the generation of free cash flow. You know, I think from our standpoint, Nick, none of the share repurchase program will impact the asset development and strategies of the development plans that come. So, you know, for us, I think that's the most critical aspect of the company that we have. We have a very strong balance sheet. We intend to maintain a very strong balance sheet. We think that is a strategic strength of us to utilize that balance sheet when appropriate and prudent. But again, none of the activities announced with the share repurchase program will impact our ability to execute on our plan. Got it. Great stuff. That's all I had. Thanks. Thank you. And there are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back over to Zach Arnold for closing remarks. Well, thank you very much for joining us today as we shared our Q3 results. We appreciate your time and your interest in INR. Have a great day. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.