U.S. Energy Corp. (NASDAQ:USEG) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Tim Moore: Thanks for being candid on that. Yeah, you made some great progress. And Ryan and Mark, I know you don’t give guidance, but in PE, if crude oil prices stayed above $70 for the rest of the year, what type of production growth do you think you could achieve maybe on an organic basis, let’s exclude that divestiture of the 11% to 12% production decline. I mean, should you be up high single-digits, just looking at this year for production volumes?

Ryan Smith: Yeah. I mean I think that could be a fair assumption, Tim. And not to be coy, but like some of the what I call day-to-day smaller scale organic projects. Those are real, and we’re still kind of getting our arms around that and starting to begin those. I think we’ll have more color on the next call or incrementally in between now and then on some of those projects and kind of what we expect it to do from a CapEx perspective and a production profile perspective. But I do think just, again, from a high level, and our model, I think, historically, we’ve always shown this, that we can keep production flat or close to flat with a very low single million CapEx number on our current assets.

Tim Moore: Great. That’s really good color. And one last question for Mark maybe. I know you did the $20 million impairment in the fourth quarter and $6.5 million in the third quarter. If the prices stay fairly flattish or not down too much. I mean would you expect you could be done with impairments for the rest of this year?

Mark Zajac: In our filing we made last night, I think we’re projecting one in the first quarter 2024. The issue ultimately is the SEC rolling prices. And so if prices decrease on a comparative basis as the quarters roll in, there’s a potential for impairment, and that’s what we’re dealing with. We’re dealing with retrospective prices relative to current prices.

Tim Moore: Yeah. No, I figured that. I just think maybe we got past March could be not as much of an issue. But thanks a lot. I appreciate all the color and the answers.

Ryan Smith: Great. Thanks, Tim.

Operator: With no further questions in the queue, we will conclude today’s conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and thank you for your participation.