Comstock Resources, Inc. (NYSE:CRK) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Leo Mariani: I just wanted to quickly follow-up on some of the prepared answers here that you guys had given here. Ron, you talked about prediction, kind of flattish in the first half of the year, a little bit of a third quarter decline, and then more of a fourth quarter decline, and of course, I’m sure it’s pretty obvious to you folks that that’s a bit inverse to what the futures curve is suggesting, where clearly prices are expected to be lower early in ’24 and then higher as you get towards those winter months in ’24. So you certainly expressed the belief that you want to be kind of flexible and sort of do what you can to kind of maximize the cash flow. So, is there some thought to pushing some of those turn-in lines out towards those later quarters and perhaps trying to shift the production a bit so it’s a little bit lower this summer and maybe higher next winter?

And is there any operational reasons maybe why you couldn’t do that maybe some of the Western Haynesville stuff has provisions or wells have to come online at a certain point in time, but any color you have there would be great.

Roland Burns: Well, I think it’s difficult to under shale if you don’t understand the timing of shale production and the way that the wells are drilled and all that to try to be super precise and bring production on within what the futures curve says it could be now, which it could be different when you get there. I mean, it’s not — I mean, you obviously can give consideration to it, and we can give consideration in the field if we have low spot prices that do we not turn a well on that day definitely. So you can manage these kind of around that, but I don’t know that you can think that you can direct it a real precise level because you could — your assumptions could be wrong and too, plus it takes like — it takes a lot of resources in preparation to bring these on and you don’t have all those available.

You can’t snap your fingers and get all the wells turned on in one day. So it’s just really balancing all that and balancing it with what you have, the fracs that you have at the time. So just because we present a plan and budget doesn’t mean it’s going to happen exactly that way. So we’ll adjust as we go through the year to what’s going on in the markets and what’s available in the spot market or the index market, et cetera.

Daniel Harrison: Yeah, and I’ll add specifically to the Western Haynesville, our two frac crews are actually fracking wells there now in the Western Haynesville, so there’s really only one other well right behind those, and we don’t have anything else coming on in the Western Haynesville till the end of the year, because, like I mentioned earlier, we got both — we got one rig that just started a two well pad a couple of weeks ago. And our other rig is getting ready to move to a two well pad, and obviously, the Western Haynesville will take more days to drill. So with two well pads, they’ll be drilling all through the spring and summer and fall.

Leo Mariani: Got it. Okay, that’s helpful color, guys. And I know you can’t snap your fingers like you said, Roland, but it sounds like maybe there is some flexibility to kind of manage this a little bit on your end, and I’m sure you’re going to be watching it very closely as the year progresses here. Okay. Maybe just a follow-up on the Western Haynesville. You obviously had your reserve report out, can you give any color around like, what some of these Western Haynesville wells were getting booked at? Maybe like, in terms of reserves per thousand feet or however you guys want to present it here.

Daniel Harrison: Generally, we don’t have a lot of bookings because we’re not trying to get beyond a direct offset as far as booking anything in the Western Haynesville. It’s still early, and we only had the seven producing wells in total in the play. So there’s a limited number of locations in the reserve report. But I would say, overall, the average is — the average kind of reserve bookings are in that 3.5 bcf per thousand feet of completed lateral. Only really one well has a pretty significant track record of performance, which is the first one, the Circle M, and it was upwardly revised with — it’s kind of outperformed that. The rest of the wells don’t have near the number of months to production. So kind of left them where they are, but the reserves are trending nicely in the play for the first wells that we’ve drilled.

Leo Mariani: Okay. That’s great color and certainly appreciate that. And just lastly for me here, just — obviously, I don’t think gas has turned out like anyone expected in 2024 here. It sounds like the plan is to really not kind of add debt from what I’m hearing from you here, Roland, and I guess just to the extent that for whatever reason, let’s say next winter is warm and it’s kind of a weaker start to the year, hopefully, that’s not the case, but if that is, are you still in a position where you don’t want to add debt or do you have to have maybe a little bit more activity next year because of holding some of the Western Haynesville? And were there any consideration of maybe putting in some, I’ll call it, near term funding to kind of get you over the gap here until markets improve later in ’25 and ’26?