Matador Resources Q2 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
July 23, 2025

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: Production up 31% year-over-year in Q2 on strong well execution, driving record free cash flow and prompting an increase to full-year 2025 guidance.
  • Positive Sentiment: Maintained a $1 billion undrawn credit facility with all 19 banks reaffirmed and reduced net debt to below 1x EBITDAX, underpinning financial flexibility.
  • Positive Sentiment: Midstream unit San Mateo hit a 99% uptime and grew processing capacity to 720 MMcf/d, with half already under commitment and multiple options explored to unlock value.
  • Positive Sentiment: Achieved a 10–15% reduction in D&C cost per foot via drilling and completion efficiencies, supporting industry-leading margins and free cash flow.
  • Neutral Sentiment: Upstream activity remains set at eight rigs for Q3, with any additional rigs or capex decisions deferred pending commodity stability, potentially impacting production cadence.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Matador Resources Q2 2025
00:00 / 00:00

There are 5 speakers on the call.

Speaker 3

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the second quarter 2025 Matador Resources Company earnings conference call. My name is Gigi and I'll be serving as the operator for today. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. We will facilitate a question and answer session at the end of the Company's remarks. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded for replay purposes and the replay will be available on the Company's website for one year, as discussed in the Company's earnings press release issued yesterday. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Mac Schmitz, Senior Vice President Investor Relations for Matador. Mr. Schmitz, you may proceed.

Speaker 4

Thank you, Gigi, and good morning everyone, and thank you for joining us for Matador Resources Company's second quarter 2025 earnings conference call. Some of the presenters today will reference certain non-GAAP financial measures regularly used by Matador Resources Company, including in measuring the company's financial performance. Reconciliations of such non-GAAP financial measures with the comparable financial measures calculated in accordance with GAAP are contained at the end of the company's earnings press release issued yesterday. As a reminder, certain statements included in this morning's presentation may be forward-looking and reflect the company's current expectations or forecasts of future events based on the information that is now available. Actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements.

Speaker 4

Additional information concerning factors that could cause actual results to differ materially is contained in the company's earnings release and its most recent annual report on Form 10-K and any subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. In addition to our earnings press release issued yesterday, I would like to remind everyone that you can find a slide presentation in connection with the second quarter 2025 earnings release under the Investor Relations tab on our corporate website.

Speaker 2

With that, I would now like.

Speaker 4

To turn the call over to Mr. Joseph Wm. Foran, our Founder, Chairman and CEO.

Speaker 2

Joe, thank you, Mac. And thank you all for listening in. We appreciate it, and we look forward to your questions and comments and being able to report to you that we feel that we've had a very solid quarter, very well executed, and it's pleasing to us because we have some people in new leadership positions and everybody else has really pitched in. I think it's exciting to see some of the ideas and the programs that they've recommended, and it'll be to everybody's benefit. In particular, I'd like to introduce Bill Lambert to you. Bill is our CFO and Head of Strategy, and I think you'll find that he has a lot to offer, and you'll see smooth running from this point forward. His aim and our aim as we were getting to know each other was very similar. We come from very similar backgrounds in culture.

Speaker 2

We've laughed about that some, and I think you all enjoy getting to know him. I think many of you already know him. Our plan, our aims, is to increase our production, but to also increase our free cash flow. Not to do one at the expense of the other, but to work them in tandem. If your production is going up, your cash flow needs to be going up, and vice versa. If your cash flow is going up, spend it wisely on some production and drilling opportunities, but be careful to keep that strong balance sheet in times like this where you have the turbulence and the volatility. The strong balance sheet, I think you'll see, is background for a lot of our initiatives and has helped us to achieve the progress that we have.

Speaker 2

More specifically, we believe we're well positioned for the back half of the year with drilling opportunities and cash flow opportunities. We have $1.8 billion available on our line of credit. Our banks have been very supportive of us. We have all 19 banks reaffirmed their plans to stay in the group, and I think 15 or 16 of the banks are also in our midstream facility. Thank you all very much for that support and vote of confidence. Obviously, as you have seen in the report, we've increased our full-year 2026 guidance both in oil production growth and cash flow. This is a result of successes in the drilling program, which pleases us. We are now producing in the Delaware from 20 different zones. My whole career, 40 years, has been spent primarily in the Delaware. We consider that as a land of opportunity.

Speaker 2

I'm also glad to report part of our time in Louisiana has resulted in us having in our deal with Chesapeake to reserve the Cotton Valley formations above the Haynesville. We believe we have 200 billion cubic feet of gas there or more waiting, all HBP, and just waiting for more stability in gas prices. Another opportunity that I'm pleased to mention to you is our midstream opportunities that has been a game saver with the tightness in the midstream markets out there in New Mexico. We got into it for flow assurance, and Gregg Krug has guided us in this regard. We've grown our midstream capacity from zero at the time of our original IPO to where we now have 720 million a day in capacity and recently turned that on.

Speaker 2

It's about half full now, but we believe before the end of the year likely to be at full capacity or close to it. The team in that regard, we were faced with the choice of either building that plant, which was $200 million or more, or putting that into drilling. We concluded that it was best to build a plant that would balance our asset base so that we were in a fee-based business along with the commodity-based business, which would be longer-lived assets and would be a balance to our production plus, and perhaps most importantly, provide flow assurance to us and our operations. I've been very glad that Gregg suggested this and helped guide us along the way. In addition, in this regard, we also are now recycling over half of our water production back in, which is a money maker for us.

Speaker 2

We're saving having to buy additional water. In the meantime, we've grown our base dividend. We've raised it six times in four years. As our habit is to review the base dividend at the end of each year, and we take a lot of pride in the base dividend and trying to make it be the right amount, we believe it's most fair to all the shareholders. We're very pleased with our results and our buyback of shares. The base dividend is something that all enjoy and believe helps make people stickier. We continue our brick by brick program, and we paid down debt, so our debt levels is now with a ratio of less than 1. Finally, we've been reducing our lease operating expenses principally through efficiencies out there in our chemical program, which has been implemented, I think, in a very solid fashion and is generating savings.

Speaker 2

The last thing is the way we look at things, I know there are going to be questions on what is the quarter result and how that compares to the sequential quarter. We tend to look more at how is it over the course of the year. How does one year compare to the last year? The cycle in oil and gas, we think, is more than a quarter to quarter business. We do like to look at the quarter numbers, but the year over year numbers are more important. For example, on production, it is up a little now, but when you look at it year over year, which you don't have as much timing differences, it is up 31%. With that, let me open the floor for questions and give Bill a chance to talk about our strategy and financial plans.

Speaker 4

Thank you, Joe. It's a pleasure to join the team here. I think really just before we jump into the Q&A, the opportunity to join Matador Resources Company and the business that we have here. I think our integrated business is extremely well positioned to deliver on both a robust free cash flow margin as well as oil production growth. Being able to do both of those things is something that we think is unique in this world. I look forward to answering your questions, but very excited to join the team. Gigi, we'll turn it back to you for Q&A.

Speaker 3

Thank you. 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, ladies and gentlemen, due to time constraints, we ask that you please limit yourself to one question. Again, we ask that you please limit yourself to one question until all have had a chance to ask a question, after which we would welcome additional follow up questions from you. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. First question is from Tim Rezvan from KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is now open.

Speaker 2

Good morning, folks. Thank you all for taking my question. I wanted to start on midstream. I was a little surprised to see there was no change to midstream EBITDA guidance for the year. You had a record second quarter. You lowered midstream OpEx guidance.

Speaker 4

Tim, I think we lost you.

Speaker 1

Tim, this is Brian Willey. I'm happy to take that question about the record quarter EBITDA. We appreciate you recognizing what a great quarter we had at San Mateo. That really starts with the men and women in the field led by Thomas Drean and Brian Nicholson and some of the others as they brought the new Marlin plant online and increased its processing capacity from 520 million cubic feet per day to 720 million cubic feet per day. San Mateo's record performance during the second quarter was driven by Matador's record production growth during the quarter. San Mateo, during the end of the first quarter and during the second quarter, connected to approximately 30 new Matador wells. Those were areas where San Mateo provides oil, gas, and water. As Matador's production increased and had record production, that was the same thing with San Mateo. We had record EBITDA.

Speaker 1

In addition, the team has been hard at work with third-party contracts and finding ways to save costs. For example, we often talk about the coordination between the upstream and the midstream. The operations folks on the San Mateo side, led by Sean O'Grady and Justin Haas, work closely with Glenn Stetson and his team and their chemical consultants. We were actually able to save about $1 million on chemical costs during the quarter. Really just a fantastic job on the coordination between the teams. As we look at the EBITDA for the remainder of the year, the first half of the year EBITDA was about $145.5 million in total, which is about half of the expected EBITDA range for the year, $275 million to $295 million. We still expect that range as Matador is drilling to Antelope Ridge and away from some of the areas.

Speaker 4

Where San Mateo operates.

Speaker 1

We are excited to continue to provide flow assurance and great value for Matador shareholders.

Speaker 3

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Scott Hanold from RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now open.

Speaker 4

Yeah, thanks. I'm going to stick on the midstream topic, and I know you all get asked this, it seems like almost every quarter, and just wondering what your view right now is on the progress of looking at options for that, including potential IPO. Just if you could set a view of how do you think about that timeline and what do you need to see from the midstream entity to be ready for that potential value creating opportunity? Is it a size and scale thing, just one of those things? You're just still assessing whether it makes best sense for Matador at this point and its shareholders? Scott, thank you for that. I think as we think about it, we do believe the value of our midstream business is not reflected in Matador's share price today. We continue to think about ways to highlight that appropriately for shareholders.

Speaker 4

I think as we think about that, there are a number of opportunities and things we think about with respect to that. I'll let Brian Willey jump in here as well.

Speaker 1

Yeah. Thanks, Bill. This is really an exciting time at Matador. Joe mentioned Bill joining the team earlier this year, and he's been just a fantastic addition to Matador, and it's allowed me to go and focus more on the midstream business and really push forward evaluating some of those strategic transactions. Whether that's something on the debt side or something on the equity side, there's a lot of opportunities in front of us. We can be patient at Matador and make sure we do the right transaction for Matador shareholders. We're free cash flow positive, so we don't necessarily need to do any type of transaction at San Mateo. We do recognize that the value of the midstream business is not reflected in Matador's stock price.

Speaker 1

We look forward to continuing to provide excellent service to Matador as I mentioned earlier, as we explore the right strategic alternative to provide the most value for Matador shareholders over the.

Speaker 2

Long term, I would like to add we're not just doing it for Matador and Matador shareholders, but the midstream team has done an excellent job of developing some great relationships with third parties that are repeat business. That's one thing that we've considered is how much of our third parties are repeat, and they're almost all repeat. Many of the really great companies of the basin have been there a long time, very strong companies financially and on production. We are delighted by that progress and think it gives us a lot of options of how to optimize that value. Greg, would you add anything to that?

Operator

No, Joe, I think that's it.

Speaker 2

I think that's spot on. We're definitely looking at any way we can.

Operator

can optimize our value for San Mateo. As far as that goes, all the midstream.

Speaker 2

We're trying to keep every.

Operator

Look under every stone possible. We're trying to position ourselves.

Speaker 2

As far as to have the management staff.

Operator

To be able to realize that.

Speaker 3

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Zach Parham from JPM. Your line is now open.

Speaker 2

Hey, thanks for taking my question. I just wanted to ask on activity levels, can you give us some detail on how you're thinking about rig activity in the back half of the year and going into 2026 if you continued running that eight rig program that you're going to be at shortly? You know, what type of production growth does that deliver in 2026? Is that more of a maintenance program? Do you need that ninth rig to deliver some production growth next year? Maybe talk about how you're thinking about the decision to add that rig back potentially?

Speaker 4

Thank you, Zach. I think that's obviously very, very topical right now. As we look at it, you're right that we will be at 8 rigs here basically at the end of the week. As we think about when we might potentially add back, I think we should really step back and think about what was the decision to ultimately change back in April. What we looked at in April was a macro environment that was highly volatile. We had the ability and flexibility in our program to optimize 2025 capital efficiency by moving some things around and reducing rig activity. With that, we were maintaining the free cash flow margin that we think is so important and balancing that against oil production growth as we look into 2026.

Speaker 4

I don't want to guide in detail at this point, but I think as we think about the second half of this year and 2026, what we really think about is how do those two metrics work in tandem. If there are opportunities to add activity and drive incremental growth, we want to make sure that we can maintain those superior margins and have incremental free cash flow from doing it. What we think one of the strengths of our portfolio is, is we believe that we can defer making that decision until later this year or the beginning of next year and still be able to drive relative growth in 2026 versus what we believe the industry average growth rate will be. I think that is important because we do believe that Matador has traditionally been known as a growing oil company.

Speaker 4

We believe maintaining that alongside the free cash flow generation is kind of the focus of how we think about things going forward.

Speaker 3

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of John Freeman from Raymond James. Your line is now open.

Speaker 2

Thanks. Good morning. Just sort of following up on Zach's question. If hypothetically we're in sort of a lower for longer sort of oil price environment, I was going to touch on something you said earlier in the prepared remarks, Joe, about, you know, y'all had a decision a couple years ago whether to take the $200 million and put it towards just drilling more or putting it towards building that plant. I'm just curious if y'all, sort of just in a hypothetical kind of lower for longer environment, if theoretically your growth profile just naturally kind of is a little lower in that environment, does maybe more of that, quote, unquote, growth capital potentially get shifted into the midstream business?

Speaker 4

I think, John, to your point, we had the decision on investing in the midstream. I think really what it goes to is we believe our integrated business can drive best-in-class free cash flow margin. Predicting commodity price has been a challenge for everyone, frankly. Whether it is lower for longer or volatile, I think what we try to look at is how do we deliver best-in-class free cash flow margin. One of the ways that we did that was traditionally investing in that midstream to drive the flow assurance, to recognize that we could sell our oil and capture that free cash flow margin. If we had not had the flow assurance that San Mateo provides us and the excellent service that they have, the reality is we wouldn't have had the oil production to have driven the free cash flow that we have today.

Speaker 4

We look to think about these things in tandem on a go-forward basis. To the extent commodity price follows the forward curve and the steep backwardation that is within it, we'll obviously adjust and manage activity levels on both the upstream and the midstream with that. I think one of the things that we look at though is we believe our relative free cash flow margin to the industry alongside the depth of our inventory means that not only can we deliver the exemplary free cash flow margin today, we believe we have duration because of our portfolio to do that. The midstream and the integrated nature of it helps sustain that over a longer period of time.

Operator

This is Craig Adams. I also wanted to emphasize the fact.

Speaker 2

That we do have, I mean, San Mateo.

Operator

Mateo has a 99% run rate, and that's huge in the midstream business. That's the assurance that we get as a producer, is that we're going.

Speaker 2

To have an outlet for our gas and oil and water takeaway on.

Operator

A regular basis and something that runs really efficiently.

Speaker 4

That is another reason we elected to do what we did.

Speaker 3

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Noah Hungness from Bank of America. Your line is now open.

Speaker 2

Morning Joe and Matador team. I wanted to touch on D&C costs this quarter. You guys had D&C per foot cost well below the low end of your guidance range. I was just wondering what drove that. How sticky are those drivers?

Speaker 4

Thank you. Noah, I'll start and then Chris will probably jump in. I think one of the benefits of our portfolio is from east to west across the basin, we have varying depths and varying cost profiles within our portfolios. How we think about it, and one of the things that took place in this quarter is we had exemplary performance in a lower cost area of the basin, more to the westward side. I think the reality, and Chris will jump in here, is as we look to the second half of the year, we have not incorporated significant service cost reductions. We have only thought about these things in terms of the cycle time efficiency at this point. I'll let Chris jump in and talk a little more.

Operator

Yeah, hi, Noah, this is Chris Calvert, EVP and COO. I think it's a great question. Obviously, we appreciate you recognizing the D&C cost per foot number. I guess a few things I would like to say to that, you know, obviously the improvement year over year, if you look at second quarter in 2024, we're down about 11% from that. I mean, we can refer to slide D in the presentation if you would like to look at it graphically. I think the majority of that improvement comes from the efficiencies like Bill just spoke to. While we do potentially think there is potential for service costs, you know, more competitive service costs coming in the back half of this year, kind of post April 2nd, these improvements have been drastically due to efficiencies both on the drilling and completion side.

Operator

We can start on the drilling side, really kind of focusing on our U turn program. If we look at, you know, 2025 U turns versus even when we started in 2023, I'll refresh everybody's memory. We drilled two wells in the U turn style in 2023. On average, it took us about 25 days to drill those wells. In 2025, on average, we've shaved 10 days off of drilling two mile U turns in a two year period. I think those drilling efficiencies are not just specific to the U turn program. We're drilling wells faster on the completion side. In February, we guided around 40 wells would be completed using Trimalfrac in the Trimalfrac process. Year to date in 2025, we've already done 30 wells with Trimalfrac, and now we expect that full year 2025 number to be closer to 50.

Operator

To refresh everyone on that, it's about a $350,000 cost savings every time you can Trimalfrac versus zipper operations. With that, you're also seeing efficiencies of about 20% or 30% faster even versus just SimoFrac process. I think you have drilling efficiencies, completion efficiencies are speeding up. That all kind of leads to this collective 10% to 15% improvement. From January 1st of this year, we're drilling and completing wells about 10% to 15% faster than we were six months ago. I think that leads to this improved D&C cost per foot number. Like Bill said, if we see that oilfield services come in and there is some sort of deflationary pressure or more competitive pricing, that has not been included in our forward-looking back half of 2025 estimates.

Speaker 2

Something I'd like to commend Chris has done very well with is we've, in the 40 years that I've run Matador, going back to the very inception, always taken the approach when these times are that we don't pit one vendor against the other vendor and just try to see which one will get down to the very lowest price. We've tried to build relationships and we have found, for whatever reason, that has worked better for creating long-term reduction and finding of efficiencies because you're not trying to beat them down but you're working together and they have ideas how to do things faster and better. We have them and by working together, for example, our driller, either they or their predecessors have drilled virtually every well that I've drilled in this 40-year career and they're finding ways to improve and we are and it's been a great collaboration.

Speaker 2

The same thing on the pipe business, we're using the same guy for years and years and then virtually all of our completion, our fracking has been done either by Schlumberger or Halliburton. After each job we do a post mortem on whatever area and say, how can we improve? How can we give you better notice? How can we create the efficiencies? Chris and his team and Cliff Humphreys have done just a great job of building those relationships and the communication between them that has led to a lot of these efficiencies. The crews, Chris and our drilling engineers have done a good job of training the crews to look for those little ways to make things more efficient and bring down the cost.

Speaker 2

Chris, I'm sorry for jumping in on you like that, but I just couldn't resist to brag on y'all a little bit on how you've done it without beating people down, but giving them to suggest ways too and for y'all to find ways.

Operator

Yeah, thank you, Joe, I appreciate you pointing that out. One thing I would also just want to point to is, I think back to even Zach's question about activity levels. As we look into the back half of the year, we understand the headwinds of volatile commodity times, but we also see opportunities. One of those opportunities is high grading operational equipment, whether that's rigs or fleets. Like Joe had mentioned, our primary pressure pumping providers, which is Halliburton next year, we've managed to high grade a lot of equipment and service personnel to where we are able to implement and integrate those simul and Trimalfrac opportunities. Like Joe said, it is all about relationships and something that Joe has cultivated over 40 years that we continue to push forward today.

Speaker 3

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Philip Jungwirth from VMO. Your line is now open.

Speaker 4

Thanks. Good morning. Recognizing that an IPO is just one of the options you could look at to unlock midstream value, as you think about San Mateo from a public investor standpoint, how important.

Speaker 2

Do you think it is that you?

Speaker 4

Have a competitive organic growth profile from Matador or is visibility around third party volumes enough? If it is important, do you think of that as more of an.

Speaker 2

Absolute type low, mid, high single digit.

Speaker 4

Type number or is it more relative to overall Permian Basin levels? Thanks, Phil. I think to start that off, I think Matador thinks of itself as a relative grower in the basin. I think obviously that growth rate is balanced with the free cash flow margin as we've discussed previously. I think our portfolio and the depth of our inventory life allows us to grow and sustain that growth with the type of returns we want to have over a long period of time. I think within that it does. The partnership that we have with San Mateo, the integrated nature of that business is key to Matador delivering on that and is key for San Mateo from a growth profile. I'll let Brian talk more about kind of how we think about Matador growth versus third party growth.

Speaker 4

I think first and foremost, the nature of how this business has come into play has really been around driving a superior result for Matador's free cash flow.

Speaker 1

Thank you, Bill. I think when we look at growth at San Mateo, we see opportunities both at Matador and with third parties. As Joe mentioned earlier, we have a lot of repeat customers on the third-party side in addition to new customers that we continue to look at. Especially up in that northern Lee County area where the Marlin plant just came on, we think there's some really good opportunities there. As Joe mentioned earlier, the Marlin plant is about half full right now. I think it's about fully committed on the reserve capacity side and it'll take a couple years to fully fill up, but it is fully committed. Those opportunities for growth present themselves on both Matador's side and being able to continue to follow Matador and the drill bit.

Speaker 1

With third parties, we have just a great team and a BD team that's doing a fantastic job. We see growth on both sides.

Speaker 2

I'd like to emphasize that we got into this with the whole idea that yes, Matador might be the major customer. To succeed and meet the test of quality, we needed to be sure to attract third party business. We have really tried very hard to be sure that the runtime is 99%. They enjoy that benefit and all the other benefits the same as Matador. I think that's why it's led to repeat business, as they did feel they were fairly treated and communicated and like the operations. So far that's been without problems. We appreciate their involvement and we appreciate the guys in the field who have really done the extra job to reach that 99%. When you had High Storm Urey go through, they didn't shut it all in and say we'll get back next week when it warms up.

Speaker 2

They slept in their trucks and kept the plants going. In addition, we've improved the system by adding that connector line between the Black River system and the Marlin system. We've had gas going in each direction on that connector line as the offloads are needed. Proud of that record and proud of the support that we've had. I think that's given us additional opportunities of what we should do for the midstream business, which drives the value of the midstream business. There are some good options that we have ahead of us. We're very glad we elected to build the plant, to take that $200 million, build the plant, which left us with enough money to pay down debt and not just put it in additional drilling. That just adds to the inventory.

Speaker 2

While we feel we're well positioned to keep building the midstream and the regular oil and gas operations and to do them in tandem, to do that together and didn't do one to the exclusion of the other. We think that gives us more balance and more stability and gives a big upside to the stock.

Speaker 3

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Kevin MacCurdy from Pickering Energy Partners. Your line is now open.

Speaker 4

Hey, good morning Matador team. Appreciate the details on the cash tax reductions this year and the change to guidance. Any thoughts on when Matador might now become subject to the AMT and how cash taxes will trend on a yearly basis? Until then, this seems like maybe an underappreciated improvement to your free cash flow outlook.

Speaker 2

Thank you. Thanks, Kevin.

Speaker 4

Yes, this is Rob Macalik. I'm the EVP Administration and Finance and as we did note in our release, we're very pleased with the Tax Act and are very optimistic on the cash tax savings that that will bring us. We do believe that this pushes out our obligations under the alternative minimum tax for several years based upon our current rates. We're still analyzing that part. I do think that that is going to be a benefit for us starting in Q3 of 2025 and beyond.

Speaker 2

To show our seriousness in these areas, Rob Macalik is moving over to do more strategy and Chief Financial work for the midstream, and Mitt Kolodni has taken over as Chief Accounting Officer. He's come in and done an excellent job, and he and Rob have really worked together, which is important. Ben, thank you for joining us and doing good work.

Speaker 3

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Oliver Huang from Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Company. Your line is now open.

Speaker 1

Good morning all and thanks for taking my question. Just wanted to circle back on activity, understand the timing of the drop down.

Speaker 2

To eight rigs as part of the.

Speaker 4

Full-year plan here shortly.

Speaker 1

The year's upstream spend trajectory would seem to imply another leg down in Q4.

Speaker 4

I was hoping that you all might be able to walk through the.

Speaker 2

Cadence of frac activity anticipated for the.

Speaker 4

Rest of the year and any flow.

Speaker 2

are effects we should be aware of when thinking about the start of 2026.

Speaker 4

Yeah, I think, Oliver, to your point, we do see with the current level of activity that to be generally the case, and I think it's a function of, frankly, a lot of good work by the team to pull activity, because of the efficiencies that we've mentioned before, into the third quarter. You're seeing a little bit of higher third quarter capital with wells that are being turned on in, frankly, the last couple of weeks of the third quarter. They're really not contributing to third quarter production as much as they are in the fourth. It's very similar to what we saw in the first and second quarter of this year.

Speaker 4

I think that is an important thing for our investors and for you all as analysts to understand about the go forward nature of the Matador business, because the Delaware has such prolific rock and multi zone development is an important piece of how to develop that rock. There will be some larger batch sizes, and those larger batch sizes will naturally have some lumpiness to production as they come on, because when they come on, they're really, really prolific. Even with the efficiencies that we are capturing across drilling and completions, there's longer cycle time to having some of the bigger programs than there has been when it was kind of individual or paired developments.

Speaker 3

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Leo Mariani from Roth. Your line is now open. Hi.

Speaker 1

I was hoping you guys could talk a little bit about uses of.

Speaker 4

Free cash flow here.

Speaker 1

Obviously you guys referred to the brick.

Speaker 2

By brick program here in terms of M&A. I was hoping you could kind of comment a bit on what you're seeing in the M&A environment. Obviously, here in second quarter, you guys bought back a decent number of shares, I guess for the first.

Speaker 1

Time in the company's history, roughly 1%. Could you maybe kind of talk to both of those and how you.

Speaker 2

Sort of balance that initiative is.

Speaker 1

The buyback going to be fairly price sensitive here?

Operator

Sure.

Speaker 4

Thank you, Leo. I think first off, just to kind of level set how we think about it. We think about free cash flow post the dividend because we view the dividend as sacrosanct. With that, after you pay the dividend, the remaining free cash flow in any quarter, we think about as how are we going to drive the best value for shareholders over the long term. We kind of see a couple of different buckets. There are really three that we think about, the first of which is the brick by brick land acquisition to kind of reinvest and replenish our inventory life, which we think is very important and runs continuously. It's a strength of the Matador team. The second is, as you noted, the share repurchase program that we have a $400 million authorization on.

Speaker 4

We're active in the second quarter, in our first quarter of having it. The final is balance sheet management and paying down debt. I think really a lot of people have asked us about is there going to be a formula or is there a specific way to think about how we do that in the future. As we look at it, we think about the value that can happen and, frankly, the way that the brick by brick works, we want to make sure that when we have those opportunities, we can capitalize on them. Similarly, we can't predict the macroeconomic volatility, but when it happens, we want to use the share repurchase program to capture that. Within all of this, we always want to be mindful of leverage and driving total debt down over time as well. I think that's really how we think about it.

Speaker 4

I'll let Brian Willey jump in on more of the M&A specific.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Bill.

Speaker 4

This is Bryan Erman, Co-President, Chief Legal Officer and Head of M&A. I think just to reemphasize what Bill said, we really do view the brick by brick approach as a strength of the company. That's something we've always done. It's something we've always had a lot of success at. I think as the market currently is a little more focused on that versus the bigger deals, we view that as a competitive advantage for Matador. As far as the quarter, it was just another typical execution on the brick by brick approach all over the basin, focused mostly in and around our existing units, but really all over the area. Again, just something that we view as a real advantage to Matador.

Speaker 3

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Listen.

Speaker 2

No, go ahead. Are you ready for closing remarks?

Speaker 3

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This ends the Q&A portion of this morning's conference call. I'd like to turn the call over to management for any closing remarks.

Speaker 2

Thank you very much and I thank you for all your questions. I thought all the questions today were very appropriate and good inquiries. I hope we've answered them. If not, call us back and we'll discuss them with you. We invite you to do that to be sure you've gotten your questions answered. The second thing I'd just like to note, I hope that you can see is that Matador Resources Company has now grown to a part where we have approximately $10 to $12 billion in assets, depending on oil and gas prices and the other opportunities. We have a team here, a true team of everybody pitching in, and we collaborate and work on this together. It's been a steady process over 40 years. I started in 1983 with $270,000, and we've enjoyed over those 40 years approximately a 20% year after year growth in value.

Speaker 2

20%, $270,000 to $10 to $12 billion in assets. Obviously, you all know me, it wasn't because of my brilliance at all, but I've somehow been able to, year after year, attract the talent to spur that growth. We're really very excited the way everybody has been pitching in and helping ideas and getting a little better every day. We're in a more complex environment today than we have probably at any time in our past where Washington is bouncing the ball around and you're not sure where it's going to land and we're trying to maintain maximum flexibility, but continue that growth not only in quality of production, amount of production, but in the quality of the production and creating the flow assurance that we can get our product out of the basin and continue to try to upgrade our people and bring on young people.

Speaker 2

We have a big internship program, 30 people this year. The people in the field, we think they're remarkable and how they take the initiative and keep the plants and the wells going and very grateful for them and the banks and everything seems to be coming together that we can continue to offer consistent growth over that time, industry leading, cost and the knowledge that we've been the first movers on a lot of new formations out there in the Delaware over the years. We think things look very promising to us. We're excited. The real issue is there's a lot of things up in the air, as we know, in Washington, in the environment, in the markets.

Speaker 2

We are trying to keep this balanced approach guided by the fact we don't want to increase production if we're not increasing cash flow, and we don't want to be just increasing cash flow and not replacing and adding to our reserves. Very pleased with the growth and continued growth in reserves, continued growth in profitability and ideas. Andrew Parker and his group VPs are doing a great job of coming up with more ideas all the time and refining their studies. That's on this call. I know you've asked questions, I hope we've answered them, but at the same time supplied you with the notion that internally we're very optimistic and you probably saw that in the last open period where our leadership, we had more insider buying than any other company.

Speaker 2

Significantly to me anyway, having run this company for 40 years, we have shareholders, we have an employee share purchase plan and we have over 95% participation. Tremendous support from the people on staff to take advantage of it and can see the growth. We like our chances. The organizations come together, the finances are there, plenty of dry powder, some great technical work. Having worked all over the basin, we have, as Tom was primed to give you a rundown in all these different areas. We had good ideas and good plans and want to, once again, someone mentioned this.

Speaker 2

Truly want to invite all of you all at one time or another, come visit with us, get to know us a little bit better, have lunch or breakfast with us, meet our young people and we'll do our best to answer all of your questions and just try to get to know each other better. I think you'll see that this is what's great about the oil and gas. It's a win win business, and we're here to win it for our shareholders. We're also here to win it for you and others and gain your trust and confidence. With that, I'm going to sign off, but really offer the sincere invitation to come and see us and take us up on that and let continue to. You all do your job, and we'll try to do ours. Back to you, Gigi.

Speaker 3

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation today. This concludes today's program.

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