Presidio Production Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: Second-quarter adjusted EBITDA was $33.2 million, beating the $30 million guidance by approximately 11%; net income attributable to Presidio was $14.4 million, or $0.34 per Class A share.
  • Positive Sentiment: The company delivered approximately 2.3% of its targeted 3%–5% AI-driven production uplift without significant capital spending, generating an estimated $4.5 million of annualized revenue; total quarterly CapEx was only $600,000.
  • Positive Sentiment: Presidio closed the Canyon Creek acquisition after quarter-end, adding an Arkoma Basin operating platform and targeting a 32% reduction in lease operating expenses; management also expects to raise the $1.35-per-share annualized dividend once the assets contribute to results, subject to board approval.
  • Positive Sentiment: The company refinanced $350 million of asset-backed debt at a 6.38% weighted-average coupon, reducing borrowing costs by 184 basis points and improving near-term cash availability for dividends and acquisitions; pro forma leverage was approximately 2.7 times adjusted EBITDA.
  • Negative Sentiment: Management expects adjusted EBITDA to be slightly below $30 million per quarter in the third and fourth quarters because current commodity prices are lower, although it projects approximately $90 million of EBITDA for the final nine months of 2026.
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Earnings Conference Call
Presidio Production Q2 2026
00:00 / 00:00

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Operator

Please note this conference is being recorded. I will now hand the call over to Mr. Connor Fair, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Connor Fair
Director of Investor Relations at Presidio Production Company

Good morning, and welcome to Presidio Production Company's second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. I am Connor Fair, Director of Investor Relations, and joining me today are our Chairman and Co-CEO, Will Ulrich, Co-CEO and Director, Chris Hammack, EVP and CFO, John Brawley, EVP and General Counsel, Brett Barnes, and Chief Technology Officer, Jason Hudak. As a reminder, today's call includes forward-looking statements. These statements are based on management's current expectations and assumptions and are subject to risks, uncertainties, and other factors, many of which are beyond the company's control, that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied on this call. For a discussion of these risks, please refer to the cautionary language in yesterday's earnings release and the risk factors in our filings with the SEC, which are available on the investor relations section of our website.

Connor Fair
Director of Investor Relations at Presidio Production Company

We will also refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. The most directly comparable GAAP measures, together with definitions and reconciliations, are included in yesterday's earnings release, which is available on the investor relations section of our website. With that, I will turn the call over to Will.

Will Ulrich
Chairman and Co-CEO at Presidio Production Company

Thank you, Connor, and good morning, everyone. We all have mountains to climb, the ones set before us and the ones we choose to set for ourselves. Chris and I started this business with nothing more than a friendship and an idea that we could create massive value from investing in oil and gas without ever drilling a well, a direct challenge to 150-year-old industry philosophy. I thought often these past two weeks about the passing of Nims Purja, who died in an avalanche in Pakistan on July 30th. If you do not know his story, I would encourage you to watch the Netflix documentary, 14 Peaks. Nims set out to do the impossible, to climb all 14 of the world's 8,000-meter peaks in six months, and he did it. He called it Project Possible. At Presidio, we also believe in the possible.

Will Ulrich
Chairman and Co-CEO at Presidio Production Company

We seek out challenges, and when we cannot find them, we will create them. We choose our routes, we take risks when the moment calls for it, but our objective is to deliberately deliver on our business model over long periods of time. This quarter was no exception. A few months ago, on our first call as a public company, we told you what we intended to do. We said we would acquire producing assets and optimize them. Through closing and integrating Canyon Creek, we have. We said we would continue creating efficiencies in our balance sheet. Through refinancing our bonds and funding our first acquisition under our $1 billion ABS acquisition warehouse with Goldman Sachs, now joined by Citizens Bank, we have. We said we would accelerate our position as the world's first agentic oil and gas company.

Will Ulrich
Chairman and Co-CEO at Presidio Production Company

Through this quarter's hires, led by our new Chief Technology Officer, Jason Hudak, and a team of seasoned Silicon Valley executives, we have. We set a target to raise the company's production 3%-5% through AI without drilling and without capital expenditure, and we are well on our way, achieving a 2.3% uplift through the second quarter. We have told you about our backlog of acquisitions, which remains as attractive as ever. Like a climber who waits for the right conditions to summit, we will make our next acquisition in short order. All of this is happening against the backdrop of major changes in the global energy landscape that I discussed on last quarter's call, and we believe FTW is one of the most compelling investment cases in American energy today. We are an operator and acquirer of producing, cash flowing American oil and gas assets.

Will Ulrich
Chairman and Co-CEO at Presidio Production Company

The case for Presidio rests on four pillars: our dividend, acquisitions, optimization, and artificial intelligence. First, the dividend. The starting point for any investor in Presidio is cash return. Our annualized dividend is $1.35 per share, a yield of approximately 12% at our recent share price. Canyon Creek closed on July 1st, so the results we are reporting today contain none of its cash flow. We intend to raise the dividend once the Canyon Creek assets are contributing to our results. We generated $15.7 million of free cash flow in the quarter, or roughly $0.50 per share, against a $0.3375 quarterly dividend. Second, growth through acquisition, backed by unique capital markets access. We have closed two acquisitions as a public company in under five months, EQVR at our formation in Canyon Creek immediately following this quarter. Our acquisition pipeline stands at approximately $17 billion.

Will Ulrich
Chairman and Co-CEO at Presidio Production Company

What makes that pipeline actionable rather than aspirational is our capital structure. Our $1 billion ABS acquisition warehouse, our master trust drop down structure, and refinancing flexibility that is unprecedented in the energy ABS market mean we can move on the right asset quickly and finance it efficiently in a way that most operators our size simply cannot. During the quarter, 25 opportunities came across our desk. We took 16 through review and bid on nine. We see nearly every deal in the market, and we bid on a little over a third of it with discipline. Third, optimization, where the story has continued to evolve. Our operating discipline has always been core to our thesis. Historically, that discipline showed up primarily as expense discipline, and it still does. Lease operating expense came in at $9.39 per BOE this quarter.

Will Ulrich
Chairman and Co-CEO at Presidio Production Company

Increasingly, the same discipline paired with our data and AI capability is showing up on the production side. Chris will walk you through the specifics, but the headline is this: We are no longer only the best operators at controlling costs. We are becoming the best operators at growing production from assets with almost zero capital expenditures. Fourth, our artificial intelligence platform that increasingly ties the other three together. During the quarter, we appointed Jason Hudak as Chief Technology Officer. Jason is not an oil and gas person. He is a Silicon Valley technology and AI executive with nearly three decades of experience, most recently as Vice President of Engineering at Aerospike, with prior senior roles at Twilio, RapidAPI, Foursquare, and Yahoo.

Will Ulrich
Chairman and Co-CEO at Presidio Production Company

Jason has built out a team of senior technology leaders across AI product, machine learning, data engineering, data science, and cloud infrastructure, drawing from companies including Twilio, Cisco, Aerospike, VMware, and Akamai. We are pairing world-class technology talent with the operating knowledge and field data already inside Presidio. Oil and gas expertise tells us which problems matter. Technology expertise lets us solve them faster, more consistently, and at greater scale. This is not a corporate IT initiative, and this is not primarily about automating back-office work. As I said previously, in this business, production, revenue, and cash flow are the prize, and that is where the mandate points. I want to be specific about what this has already produced because it is easy for the word AI to sound like a slogan rather than a result. Production for the quarter averaged 22,755 bbl of oil equivalent per day.

Will Ulrich
Chairman and Co-CEO at Presidio Production Company

Against our 3%-5% full-year AI uplift target, we have now delivered approximately 2.3%, 1.4% from DUG, our production surveillance agent, and another nearly 1% from adjacent AI initiatives Chris will describe. That is measured well level uplift, generating $4.5 million of annualized revenue in Q2, and we are just getting started. One could see substantial additional value just attributed to where our growing AI platform sits today. We now have roughly 2,000 wells on the intelligence platform. We are on track against our 3%-5% full-year target, and Chris is going to take you into the field and show you exactly how it happens. Turning to the quarter, the second quarter was an important period of execution.

Will Ulrich
Chairman and Co-CEO at Presidio Production Company

We reported net income attributable to Presidio of $14.4 million, or $0.34 per Class A share, and generated adjusted EBITDA of $33.2 million against the $30 million we guided you to. A beat of $3.2 million or roughly 11%. Production averaged 22,755 BOE per day with minimal CapEx of $600,000. We also completed a lower-cost investment-grade ABS financing. Immediately following quarter end, we closed the Canyon Creek acquisition and entered the Arkoma Basin, a transaction that, together with our lower cost of capital, supports future dividend increases subject to board approval. Canyon Creek is our second acquisition as a public company and marks our entry into the Arkoma. That entry matters because Canyon Creek is more than a single transaction. It establishes a new land and expand platform. The first deal gives us an operating foothold, local knowledge, field infrastructure, and a team in the basin.

Will Ulrich
Chairman and Co-CEO at Presidio Production Company

From that foundation, we apply our operating playbook, build basin level intelligence, and evaluate adjacent opportunities. That is how we built Presidio from the beginning with our land and expand strategy. We enter a basin through an asset we understand, improve it through operations, and then expand around that position with discipline. We will remain selective. The objective is not to win every process or grow for growth's sake. It's to acquire the right producing assets at the right price with a clear path to operational improvement, compelling returns, and increases to the dividend. We acquire producing American oil and gas assets with existing cash flow. We make those assets more productive through operations, technology, and better decisions. We finance them efficiently, and we return a meaningful portion of the resulting cash flow to shareholders. We acquire, we optimize, we grow the dividend, we repeat.

Will Ulrich
Chairman and Co-CEO at Presidio Production Company

With that, I'll turn the call over to Chris.

Chris Hammack
Co-CEO and Director at Presidio Production Company

Thank you, Will. At Presidio, value creation begins the moment we close an acquisition. We take responsibility for the people, the wells, the vendors, and the systems, and we begin improving how the asset is operated from day one. We are not relying on drilling or large capital projects. Our total CapEx for the quarter was $600,000 against the $33.2 million of adjusted EBITDA. Value comes instead from the thousands of daily decisions that determine production, operating costs, and cash flow across a mature asset base. I want to spend my time this morning on those decisions because they are unique in today's market. Before I get into any of that, through the first half of 2026, we have zero recordable injuries, zero days away cases, and zero vehicular incidents. Our safety committee is an employee-led.

Chris Hammack
Co-CEO and Director at Presidio Production Company

We hold monthly safety meetings with season-appropriate focus, and every post-incident review is shared with the entire field staff. Lessons travel from the field up, not just from the office down. In an operation running roughly 2,000 wells across three states, that record is a result of the deliberate work by our field organization, and I want to recognize them for it. Will mentioned that we have delivered roughly 2.3% of production uplift from our AI against our 3%-5% full-year target. Let me tell you exactly where that came from. First, DUG is our production surveillance agent. It continuously monitors well level data across the operated base, flags deviations against expected behavior, and routes recommendations to the field engineer responsible for that well.

Chris Hammack
Co-CEO and Director at Presidio Production Company

Over the last three months, DUG has averaged 400 BOE per day of incremental production, 1.4 percentage points of our production result on its own. It is the single largest contributor to our production beat this quarter, and it did not exist a year ago. Second, AI-enhanced weekend coverage. Weekends have always been a weak spot on our mature asset base for the simple reason that we run reduced manpower. We used AI to identify which wells carry the most downtime attributable to the lack of weekend coverage, cross-referenced against our highest production wells, and gave our weekend pumpers an interactive table and map, a game plan for where to go and in what order. In the second quarter, weekend production increased 2.5%. That is a scheduling problem we have lived with for years, solved with better information rather than more headcount. Third, the AI plunger boxes.

Chris Hammack
Co-CEO and Director at Presidio Production Company

We have installed 24 of these on wells. Rather than requiring full-scale SCADA infrastructure, the unit analyze and continuously adjusts plunger cycle timing, monitors micro events, establish estimates fluid volumes per cycle, and tracks plunger performance even when traditional sensors miss the signature. On the wells where it is installed, gas has gone from a pre-install average of 2.7 million per day to 3 million a day post-install, roughly a 10% lift on production and about 0.2% on total company production. We have 24 wells on it today. Once we optimize wells with this plunger box, we will move it to the next group of wells for further optimization. None of these replace field judgment. All three of them point field judgment at the right well, in the right order, on the right day.

Chris Hammack
Co-CEO and Director at Presidio Production Company

That distinction matters, and it is why our field organization has adopted this rather than resisted it. Now let me talk about workovers. Our wedge workover program is the clearest example what disciplined, data-directed intervention produces on a mature asset base. We have completed 25 of 69 identified jobs, with 44 remaining in the current queue and the program projected to finish in the fourth quarter. In the second quarter, we completed 17 workovers. The payout period compressed from one year at original forecast to 0.75 years on actuals. PV10 improved from $2.7 million to $3.4 million, and returns exceeded 100% for these workovers. These are going better than we expected, and we have more to do.

Chris Hammack
Co-CEO and Director at Presidio Production Company

The reason this matters beyond the barrels, each tranche of workover teaches us something about which candidates screen well and which do not, and the feedback goes straight into how the next tranche gets built. Now turning to integration, and I will take EQVR first. The EQVR asset is 216 active wells producing approximately 2,800 net BOE per day, and the integration is substantially complete on the items that drive cost. The headline is a 30% reduction in lease operating expenses on the asset from roughly $700,000 per month in the second quarter of 2025 to $500,000 per month to date. Here is how we got there. On labor, we have redesigned the asset into four routes, filled a new production tech position through internal promotion, and retained the fifth EQ of our EQ pumper for our Presidio route while eliminating a contract pumper entirely.

Chris Hammack
Co-CEO and Director at Presidio Production Company

On compression, we released two units, downsized two more, and renegotiated eight, with the majority of the remaining fleet now under contract through the second and third quarters of 2027. On chemicals, we moved the vendor onto Presidio pricing, and we have completed production software integration in mid-May and have finished SCADA integration. We also continue to improve the quality and consistency and data coming off the EQVR assets because better data improves both day-to-day operating decisions and the performance of the intelligence platform over time. Now to Canyon Creek. At Canyon Creek, 42 operated wells are producing approximately 3,500 net BOE per day. We took over field operations day one and immediately began running the same playbook.

Chris Hammack
Co-CEO and Director at Presidio Production Company

Already complete, we eliminated one contract route and created a company route, eliminated an additional foreman role, swapped the chemical vendor, and eliminated an excessive foamer expense by executing workovers the prior operator had deferred and transitioned production software on day one. We also completed all five of the neglected workovers we had identified in diligence. All five were successful. Still in progress. On compression, two releases and two downsizes are complete with one additional downsize schedule for August. On SCADA, we have completed the transition to Presidio and are now working the direct SCADA to production software integration. We also have a yard consolidation, scrapping unusable inventory, and moving some to smaller yards that are scheduled for the end of September. We are projecting a 32% reduction in lease operating expense at Canyon Creek from roughly $250,000 a month to $170,000, measured against the third quarter of 2025.

Chris Hammack
Co-CEO and Director at Presidio Production Company

Speed matters here. The first days and weeks after closing are when operating culture is established, responsibilities are clarified, and the foundation for future performance is set. We want the people closest to the wells to understand how decisions are made, what they are accountable for, and how they are empowered to improve the asset. We want data from those wells flowing quickly into the systems our operating and engineering teams use every day. Once those systems, relationships, and disciplines are in place, we are in a far stronger position to evaluate and integrate additional assets in the basin. That's why land and expand matters. Canyon Creek is not simply another acquisition. It's an operating platform, local knowledge, field infrastructure, and data foundation from which we expand in the Arkoma. One last item, and it gets overlooked.

Chris Hammack
Co-CEO and Director at Presidio Production Company

Over the trailing 12 months through July, we have realized approximately $13 million of cash consideration from leasehold monetization across 61 separate transactions. We are a producing asset company. We do not hold undeveloped acreage that someone else values more than we do, and turning that acreage into cash is a real, repeatable part of how this model funds itself. I'll now turn the call over to John.

John Brawley
EVP and CFO at Presidio Production Company

Thanks, Chris. This was Presidio's first full quarter as a public company following our IPO in March. I will note the quarter does not include Canyon Creek, which closed on July 1st, immediately following quarter end. We had a strong quarter across all four key areas: production, revenue, operating expenses, and EBITDA. I will take each in turn, because in every case, the outperformance traces to something specific. When I go through the numbers below, for revenue, I am talking about the whole quarter and the first quarter, both the predecessor and the successor period combined, whereas for any per-unit metrics, I am using just the successor period from March 4th to March 31, as that period contains the EQVR asset and is post-IPO and therefore apples to apples on a per-unit basis with the second quarter.

John Brawley
EVP and CFO at Presidio Production Company

Starting with production averaged approximately 22,800 BOE per day, slightly above the successor period, March 4th to March 31st, with a mix of approximately 16% oil, 57% natural gas, and 27% NGLs. The increasing versus normally declining production is attributable to our AI systems and our wedge workover program. Turning to revenue. Revenue, including hedge settlements, was $60.9 million, including $6.9 million of realized hedge settlements, up from $34.4 million in the first quarter. The largest drivers of increased revenues for the quarter come from our restructured hedges and an increase in oil and NGL pricing during the quarter, partially offset by a reduction in natural gas prices. On the cost side, lease operating expense was $9.39 per BOE, improved from $9.47 in the first quarter successor period. Total operating expense, including production and ad valorem taxes, was $11.22 per BOE, down from $11.68.

John Brawley
EVP and CFO at Presidio Production Company

This was the impact of enhanced production from optimization, AI, and the realization of cost efficiencies. Consolidated net income was $15.5 million, of which $14.4 million was attributable to Presidio C Corp or $0.34 per Class A share. Adjusted EBITDA was $33.2 million against the $30 million we discussed on our prior call. While this was a great quarter, given current commodity prices, which trail off in the third and fourth quarters, I would expect EBITDA to be very slightly under $30 million per quarter in the next two quarters, but summing to $90 million for the last nine months of 2026. Reconciliations of any non-GAAP measures to net income are included in the earnings release. The quarter benefited from the first full period of the restructured hedge portfolio together with continued operating efficiencies across the asset base. Capital expenditures remained minimal, consistent with our low reinvestment model.

John Brawley
EVP and CFO at Presidio Production Company

Next, I will spend some time on the ABS refinancing because it meaningfully improved our cost of capital and the structure supporting our acquisition and dividend model. On June 9, we closed a $350 million investment-grade refinancing of our prior asset-backed securitization at a weighted average coupon of 6.38%. The refinancing included two investment-grade tranches of $175 million each. We reduced the weighted average coupon by 184 basis points from 8.22% to 6.38%. The transaction was used to repay our prior ABS, pay off balances outstanding under our RBL, and a $35 million hedge restring. The refinancing also introduced an anticipated repayment date or ARD structure. Although the notes mature in 2041, the ARD structure reduces scheduled amortization during the first five years. Said simply, less cash is contractually directed to principal in the near term, leaving more cash available to support dividends and acquisitions.

John Brawley
EVP and CFO at Presidio Production Company

That is an important improvement from the prior ABS. We now have a lower fixed cost of capital, long-duration financing, and a more efficient near-term amortization profile. In structuring this ABS, we were intentional in creating a structure which works with our strategy and as a public company. We are keeping our capital structure as simple as possible while still taking advantage of the ABS advance rates cost of capital. The most important structural feature of our ABS is its ability to be flexible to fund our growth. We approach this flexibility through two avenues. First, the ABS includes a master trust structure, which allows for the drop-down of additional assets into new series of bonds. This is relatively common in ABS. The second structural design element is new, a first in the energy ABS market.

John Brawley
EVP and CFO at Presidio Production Company

Because we are a growing public company and transparent is important in our capital structure, we fundamentally changed the call protection versus all energy ABS transactions preceding us. To date, energy ABS prepayment penalties typically require payments of all expected future interest, discounted at Treasuries plus 50 basis points. Our notes, however, are redeemable at 102-101 in years one and two and at par thereafter. This allows us unprecedented flexibility to refinance multiple series of notes into one following acquisitions or drop-downs from our warehouse. It allows us to finance future acquisitions without creating unnecessary complexity in the capital structure. We now have two options for adding assets to our ABS. Utilization of the master trust structure or refinancing without a painful make-whole cost. Taken together, the lower coupon, reduced scheduled amortization, and greater refinancing flexibility create a materially better financing platform for Presidio.

John Brawley
EVP and CFO at Presidio Production Company

Speaking of the warehouse facility, the Canyon Creek acquisition marked the first use of our $1 billion ABS warehouse facility. We funded the transaction with an initial $55 million draw under the facility, and in connection with the closing of Canyon Creek, we issued 1,962,240 shares of Class A common stock to the sellers. The warehouse performed exactly as designed. It allowed us to fund a PDP acquisition efficiently at closing, with the ability to move that asset into a permanent ABS financing over time. I also note that our friends at Citizens Bank, who also lead our credit facility, joined the warehouse for 40% participation, broadening our lender base and adding capacity to support future acquisitions. This demonstrates that we continue to attract world-class capital partners at an attractive cost of capital.

John Brawley
EVP and CFO at Presidio Production Company

Continuing with the balance sheet, as of June 30, total debt principal outstanding was $350 million, and net debt was $296.5 million. Giving pro forma effect to the $55 million draw under the ABS warehouse facility used to fund Canyon Creek, net debt was $351.5 million. Based on that pro forma net debt of $351.5 million, an annualized second quarter adjusted EBITDA of approximately $132.7 million, leverage was approximately 2.7x. As for liquidity, as of June 30, we had $42.3 million of unrestricted cash and no borrowings outstanding under the RBL. Subsequent to quarter end, the borrowing base on our RBL was redetermined in the ordinary course from $65 million to $60 million. The reduction reflects the realization of production and hedges since the prior borrowing base redetermination and was expected.

John Brawley
EVP and CFO at Presidio Production Company

Therefore, liquidity pro forma for the borrowing base adjustment is currently approximately $102.3 million, consisting of $42.3 million of unrestricted cash and $60 million of available capacity under the RBL. As for hedges, we continue to maintain a multi-year commodity hedging program across oil, natural gas, and NGL production. We view hedging as an important part of our capital structure. It provides cash flow visibility, supports dividend durability, and helps us underwrite acquisitions with greater confidence. The detailed hedge table is included in the earnings release. I will close with the acquisition market. Instability in the Middle East has led to moderately higher commodity prices. That environment has led to a plethora of companies deciding to put their assets on the market when previously they were on the fence. Deal activity has been incredibly strong. We have been actively bidding on opportunities daily and weekly.

John Brawley
EVP and CFO at Presidio Production Company

We are bidding on assets from $50 million to $2 billion. Our bids have been competitive. However, we will not overpay, and we remain disciplined on price, structure, and returns. The environment is strong, and we are getting terms that back. The combination of our PDP strategy, public platform, ABS access, and operating track record position us well to execute our growth strategy. With that, I will turn the call back to Will for closing remarks. Thank you.

Will Ulrich
Chairman and Co-CEO at Presidio Production Company

Thanks, John. Last quarter, we said Presidio was built for a changing game in energy. This quarter, we showed what that means in practice. We delivered $14.4 million of net income and $33.2 million of adjusted EBITDA against $30 million guided, a beat of 11%. We were able to increase production during the period and have now delivered 2.3% of AI-driven production uplift against our 3%-5% target with zero incremental capital. We cut 184 basis points off our cost of ABS capital and funded $35 million of additional hedge protection through 2027. We closed Canyon Creek and established a new operating platform in the Arkoma. Our dividend is on exactly the schedule we described to you last quarter, $1.35 per share now, with an expected raise in the future for the Canyon Creek acquisition, subject to board approval now that Canyon Creek is on our platform.

Will Ulrich
Chairman and Co-CEO at Presidio Production Company

We have an acquisition pipeline of approximately $17 billion. We will remain disciplined. We are not trying to own every asset. We are trying to own the assets where our operating model, capital structure, and technology create the greatest value. This country will need more reliable energy, more productive infrastructure, and better decisions from the physical assets already in the ground. Presidio sits directly at that intersection. We own producing American oil and gas assets. We operate them with a low reinvestment model, $600,000 of CapEx against $33 million of EBITDA. We finance them through a purpose-built capital structure, and we are building technology designed to make every well, every employee, and every acquisition more productive. That combination is rare. We believe it is strategically important, and we believe it can become extraordinarily valuable.

Will Ulrich
Chairman and Co-CEO at Presidio Production Company

Our work now is to execute, continue to integrate EQVR and Canyon Creek, continue improving the existing asset base, acquire the right assets at the right price, grow the dividend, and build a company worthy of the opportunity in front of us. We are still at the beginning. Thank you for joining us this morning. Operator, please open the line for any questions.

Operator

Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question at this time, you may press star one from your telephone keypad and a confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Thank you. The first question is from the line of Neal Dingmann with William Blair. Please proceed with your questions.

Neal Dingmann
Neal Dingmann
Analyst at William Blair

Morning, guys. Great update. My first question is likely for Chris, for you and John on acquisitions. You have talked about this a little bit, but love to hear specifically, could you all talk about how you view the initial ops and financial initiatives and what I would call the low-hanging fruit, that you all realize, "Let us look at a transaction like Canyon Creek." When you hit the ground running there, what you and John are looking at both on the operational and financial side to take advantage.

Chris Hammack
Co-CEO and Director at Presidio Production Company

Yeah, Neal, this is Chris. I will take the operational side, and John can chime in on the finance side of this. I think we look for assets that obviously fix the mix of what we look for from a basin perspective, take away all the things that we have talked about before. I think, the idea of coming in and not only having a good value at acquisition, but levers that we have used in the past around just focusing more on producing wells and not the drilling side of the business. As we have seen over and over again, as companies focus more on the development side, they are just not as keenly focused on the operations things as we are and kind of laser focused.

Chris Hammack
Co-CEO and Director at Presidio Production Company

Whether it is around the manpower or the optimization, utilization of compression, around chemical management programs that we manage in-house, which are kind of three of the big levers we use. We look to see which one of those fit those playbooks well. We have spent a lot of time around the Arkoma Basin and thought that it was very similar in those facets to the Western Anadarko Basin, where the majority of the assets have sat until today. We have spent a lot of time around there trying to figure out our ways in and where the land and expand starts. The Canyon Creek assets were a perfect fit for that from a company that has spent the majority of their time developing these assets, drilling new wells, proving out what their business plan was there, and not necessarily focused on the day-to-day stuff that we do.

Chris Hammack
Co-CEO and Director at Presidio Production Company

Kind of textbook play, and we think there is a significant amount of other things to do in and around those assets and in the kind of the broader Anadarko-Arkoma Basin.

John Brawley
EVP and CFO at Presidio Production Company

From the financing side, we have two ways to finance the debt portion of an acquisition. The first would be using our ABS warehouse that we have with Goldman Sachs, and now Citizens Bank has joined. We can also fund acquisitions if they are smaller under our RBL. We are very careful when we evaluate them to make sure that anything we do would be accretive to free cash flow per share, dividend per share, things like that. We also look at the full cycle all-in return and make sure that we are generating equity levered returns close to 20%. From the operational finance perspective, we look to implement an FP&A system that I think is indicative of much larger E&Ps. We implement our data systems and start bringing that operational financial discipline into everyday operations.

Neal Dingmann
Neal Dingmann
Analyst at William Blair

Great. Will, my second question is for you or Jason on the AI platform. Specifically, could you all give color on, you touched on this a little bit, but I would love to hear more color on the cost savings initiatives such as DUG and how quickly you are realizing these savings.

Will Ulrich
Chairman and Co-CEO at Presidio Production Company

Yeah. DUG is a well intelligence agent. We're focused on production growth through DUG. We'll have an additional tool that we'll be rolling out here in the fall that's actually more focused on the cost-saving side of the business. But what the model is doing at this point is essentially, it's getting a live look at production every day. It is in the hands of 100% of our guys who are in the field, and it's identifying anomalies from both budget and also from what we call the theoretical max production of the well, assuming that the well was flowing without any constraints and pipeline pressures or anything to hold it back, what could it be doing?

Will Ulrich
Chairman and Co-CEO at Presidio Production Company

We look at the biggest kind of discrepancies between that theoretical max production and where it's producing or from the budget, and those are flagged for each one of the pumpers and each one of our guys out in the field. So that when they open up the platform, they're able to see what's going on with their route, see where the biggest kind of underperformers are for that day. And then also through the systems that we've built, it will provide kind of a high, medium, low recommendation in terms of what it thinks the issue is and what the solution should be. And then the pumper also has the opportunity to insert his own solution if it was something else, and the model learns from that as a result.

Will Ulrich
Chairman and Co-CEO at Presidio Production Company

The cool thing about that is, because it's learning, it's distributing the knowledge base of all of our pumpers that are pumping these thousands of wells across a pretty large geographic footprint. It essentially allows every one of the pumpers to have access to the knowledge of every other pumper in terms of troubleshooting the production from wells. We're able to attribute the production growth from those kind of prioritized interactions, and then also the knowledge transfer from maybe a more experienced pumper to a less experienced pumper, for example.

Neal Dingmann
Neal Dingmann
Analyst at William Blair

Thanks, guys.

John Brawley
EVP and CFO at Presidio Production Company

Thank you, Neal.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Sharif Elmaghrabi with BTIG. Please proceed with your question.

Sherif Elmaghrabi
Sherif Elmaghrabi
Analyst at BTIG

Hi. Thanks, and good morning. Just one question for me, but kind of a two-parter today.

Sherif Elmaghrabi
Sherif Elmaghrabi
Analyst at BTIG

Call it global supply demand imbalance at the moment, driving more sale and purchase activity. I am wondering if you are seeing any impact to deal pricing, because on the one hand, there is more, call it acreage up for sale, but on the other hand, the near-term returns have just got a bit more attractive. If I could follow that up, you mentioned the Canyon Creek acquisitions assets had an attractive profile similar to what you have got in Anadarko, and I am wondering where you see in that context, I am wondering where you see more opportunities for M&A through the rest of the year.

Will Ulrich
Chairman and Co-CEO at Presidio Production Company

John, you want to take these?

John Brawley
EVP and CFO at Presidio Production Company

Yeah, absolutely. On the pricing of deals, it certainly makes deals more expensive when the strip comes up. You see the near-term strip come up, the pricing expectations do come up. We don't mind that because we're hedging it, and hedging it heavily out of the gate. For us, we're locking in that equity rate of return as we do these deals. We like the environment where there are more people coming to market. The market is getting saturated with sellers, which presents more opportunity. While the absolute price may go up, we're really looking at the discount rate of the deal and the equity levered return. We have been very close on some deals that we were looking at in the second quarter while preserving very strong equity rates of return.

John Brawley
EVP and CFO at Presidio Production Company

I think the impact of prices coming up, yes, makes deals more expensive, but when you lock those in through hedging and protect your equity returns and have more sellers than buyers potentially in the market, that's an attractive environment. Your second question was Canyon Creek, asking where we see opportunities. We certainly see opportunities overlaying where we are currently, both in the West Anadarko Basin and in the Arkoma Basin. We see opportunities in other areas throughout Texas, Oklahoma, and generally what we call the Mid-Continent, so the center top of the country. I don't think we would necessarily stay just in the Arkoma or in the West Anadarko Basin.

John Brawley
EVP and CFO at Presidio Production Company

We would look to places where there is not heavy drilling activity that can impact your production, where there is mature assets that fit the decline profile that we're looking for, where there are attractive opportunities, even at a higher decline rate that might have a very strong levered rate of return. We're focused on Texas and Oklahoma at the moment. There are some other areas we'll look at as well.

Sherif Elmaghrabi
Sherif Elmaghrabi
Analyst at BTIG

Great color. Gentlemen, thank you very much.

Will Ulrich
Chairman and Co-CEO at Presidio Production Company

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. At this time, I turn it back to Will for any closing comments.

Will Ulrich
Chairman and Co-CEO at Presidio Production Company

Terrific. Thank you all for joining, and we look forward to continuing to execute and providing you with another update in a few months.

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this will conclude today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. We thank you for your participation and have a wonderful day.

Executives
    • Connor Fair
      Director of Investor Relations
    • Will Ulrich
      Chairman and Co-CEO
    • Chris Hammack
      Co-CEO and Director
    • John Brawley
      EVP and CFO
Analysts