Range Resources Corporation (NYSE:RRC) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Dennis Degner : Yes, I think if you look back, I’ll just add one quick item. If you look back over when your question was, what’s the opportunity there? We see it’s a long runway. A year ago I believe that this call or at the April call, we kind of walked through an example of where the pad size we had returned to versus the pad size we have not yet returned to. And it was the pads we returned to only represented a small percentage of the overall data set. This past year we returned to a pad site again for the third time, and we drilled more literal footage in that third return than we did in the prior two, showing the further continual incremental development of drilling long laterals, having some of our most efficient D&C development costs, and utilization of those roads, infrastructure gathering, etc. So we see a long runway as we think about our inventory total and the ability to return to those pad sites and have further capital efficient leading cost structure.

John Abbot: I appreciate it. Thank you for taking our questions.

Jeff Ventura: Thank you for being on.

Dennis Degner : Thanks John.

Operator: And our next question comes from the line of Paul Diamond of Citi. Your line is now open.

Paul Diamond: Good morning, all. Thanks for taking the call or thanks for taking the time. Just a quick question here, so €“ and what’s your expectations through the year, obviously still trending directionally upward. You guys €“ in your conversations, are you guys seeing any of those or just in the aggregate, anything particularly you are starting to break or anything particular where it does concern your softening?

Jeff Ventura: You are specifically talking about costs and inflation, just to clarify your question.

Paul Diamond: Yes. I’m sorry, yes, that’s right.

Dennis Degner: Thanks Paul. As we, I’ll kind of take a half a step back and what we’re not seeing is questions or requests to increase costs today. What we have seen is, we’ll call it a stabilization. As you start to look through the balance of this year though, we would expect with some of the announcements of rig activity starting to maybe slow in other basins, these maintenance level programs that have been announced. We would expect that as you get deeper into the year, there would be further opportunities that will surface for us to reduce service costs and that could culminate in a variety of forms and fashions. I think if you look at, whereas an example where fuel prices are today versus maybe where they were in the back half of 2022, that could present an opportunity to shore up, let’s just say some savings for the balance of the year, along with tubular goods starting to see some relief.

So we would expect the deeper you get into the year there to be some opportunities that would further present themselves or service cost reductions.

Paul Diamond: Understood. Thank you. And I just have one quick follow-up. Given the volatility that we’re seeing in the market in nat gas, natural gas pricing, is there a point direction either upward or downward that would kind of have you guys revisiting your operational plan for the year or is it pretty much locked in?

Mark Scucchi: This is Mark. I’ll kick that one off. I think as we’ve each mentioned in various forms throughout our discussion so far this morning, we’re talking about degrees of free cash flow. So I’ll bring it back to our waterfall and capital allocation. First, reinvesting cash flow to maintain production levels that maximizes margins. We have a well utilized infrastructure system that delivers production to a diverse set of locations. 90% of our revenue roughly is outside the Appalachian Basin across gas and natural gas and liquids. So we’re coming into this market where prices may be softer this year, but we’re still generating extremely competitive returns and able to reduce debt and return capital to shareholders. So I think being at a maintenance level of spend again this year, still is a prudent reinvestment of cash flow of the business.