Viper Energy Partners LP (NASDAQ:VNOM) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Travis Stice: Good question, Paul. I would say versus E&P land, the bid-ask is still pretty wide in minerals. Minerals is unique because a lot of these mineral owners, they don’t pay any CapEx. They don’t see the impacts of inflation on their cost structure or their checks. All they see is the months they received in July and August of last year when oil was $100 a barrel. So that’s their new baseline. And that results in a wider bid-ask spread today with crude at 75% than summer last year over $100. So it’s a little different in mineral land. I would say the bid-ask is still pretty wide. Obviously under Diamondback we can still — we still have differential information on timing so that we can pay more from a value perspective, because we know exactly when those minerals are going to get developed. But we’ll see how it unfolds throughout the year, but right now it’s pretty wide.

Paul Diamond: Understood. Thank you. And just a quick follow-up, kind of, like shifting from Diamondback acreage more to the third-party. As far as like operational cadence, is there anything you guys have seen in the last quarter or so that surprised you as far as the operations cadence or just how they’re thinking about the medium to longer term?

Adam Lawlis: No not really Paul. I would say gross activity levels have been pretty steady. When you look at the rig count, you look at wells being spud or permits being filed across the position I think really gross exit levels have been pretty steady for the past six to nine months. When we look forward to 2023 though, we’re going to get some benefit on the third-party side of some of our higher NRI stuff being developed. So here today in February, it’s kind of the hardest guidance we have to do for the full year and making some assumptions on what Q4 of 2023 might look like. But right now today, we’ve got pretty much the same visibility to total net wells being turned to production this year as we did all of last year. So that’s pretty encouraging for us when we look at third-party activity levels and I think that could continue to improve as we progress through the year.

Paul Diamond: Understood. Thanks for your time.

Adam Lawlis: Thanks Paul.

Operator: At this time, I would like to now turn the call back over to Mr. Travis Stice, CEO.

Travis Stice: Thank you again to everyone for participating in today’s call. If you’ve got any questions, please reach out to us using the contact information provided. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you for your participation in today’s call. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect.