Sitio Royalties Corp. Price & Performance (STR)

You can find our recent news release and some supplemental slides on our web site under the Investor Relations section. I'm joined this morning by our CEO, Chris Konasente and our CFO, [indiscernible] After our brief prepared remarks, Chris, Carrie and other members of our leadership team will be available to take your questions. Before we start, I would like to remind you that our discussion today may contain forward looking statements and non GAAP measures. Please refer to our earnings release, investor presentation and publicly filed documents for additional information regarding such forward looking statements and non GAAP measures. I will now turn the call over to Chris.

Thanks, Alyssa, and welcome, everyone. Want to publicly welcome Alyssa Stevens to the Sitio team. Joined us early this year our new VP of Investor Relations, of you may have met her already, but she is a great addition to Sitio. Has allowed Ross Long to take on additional leadership responsibilities on our finance team. So let's get started. We will divide today's call into three segments. First, I'll review our twenty twenty four highlights and how we strengthened the business through accretive acquisitions and active management of our minerals. [indiscernible] Carrie will summarize our recent financial results and our 2025 outlook. Lastly, we'll review our key priorities for the year. 2024 was a strong year of execution for Sitio Sitio, and we have a solid list of accomplishments I'll hit the highlights. First, delivered against our full year projections. We had record fourth quarter production of about 41,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, a 14% over year [indiscernible] And averaged over 39,000 barrels of oil equivalent for the year pro form a for the DJ Basin acquisition. We exceeded the high end of full year guidance even after raising guidance twice during the year. Our expenses and taxes fell within or slightly below our guidance range.

Solid results were due to the exceptional work of the entire team at Sitio Sitio, The quality of our land positions and the most prolific U. S. Basins strong activity and well performance accretive acquisitions and our differentiated asset management capabilities. Second, we continue to develop innovative efficiencies. This is one of our core competencies that differentiates us from our peers. Throughout 2024, we refined our proprietary custom built asset management applications which allow us to process and analyze significantly more data per person. We can now automatically process more than 99% of the revenue check data we receive from our operators. Reducing approximately 21,000,000 rows of data down to 100,000 records for our staff to review annually. Taking this a step further, we use AI models to interpret contracts that enable us to identify revenue payment producing a dashboard for further analysis by our team. In 2024, we captured $19,000,000 of missing revenue payments. Offsetting over two thirds of our cash G and A. We have invested in our future both in terms of highly skilled people across the company and new technologies. Our relatively small investments in asset managed systems will be returned many times over and we expect meaningful reductions in cash G and A costs per BOE Next, we closed 16 high value acquisitions throughout the year.

These were immediately accretive to discretionary cash flow per share and represented some of highest return investments in our history It was a standout year for consolidation of high return small and medium sized deals. Ethio has demonstrated its ability to negotiate deals outside of normal broad auction process Our practices are repeatable and the deals we've executed are impact in the aggregate. It was a healthy year of deal flow for us, with acquisitions totaling more than $350,000,000 including fourth quarter deals of approximately $140,000,000 The fourth quarter deals added 3,300 net royalty acres to our portfolio. Primarily in the Delaware Basin.

Number four, we are committed to a strong balance sheet and our capital structure is solid. In December, our borrowing base was increased to $925,000,000 an increase of $75,000,000 Year over year, our annual interest expense on a per BOE basis was down over 17%. As we refinanced higher cost notes in late twenty twenty three. Our balanced capital structure high quality assets and robust coverage ratios helped ensure financial flexibility, ample liquidity and access to future capital at attractive rates Our senior notes continue to trade well above par and we are one of two minerals companies currently accessing the public debt markets. Which advantages our cost of capital. Lastly, prioritize capital returns to shareholders In 2024, we returned $330,000,000 to owners, or over 70% of our discretionary cash flow Since becoming public in mid-twenty twenty two, our cumulative return of capital to shareholders is nearly $850,000,000 including dividends and share buybacks. This represents nearly 30% of our current market capitalization. At current commodity prices, we expect that number to exceed $1,000,000,000 in 2020 This was a great year for us. We had winning combination of execution, efficiency gains and acquisition activity that allowed us to maintain our strong balance sheet, return capital to shareholders.

Importantly, our results underscore the repeatability With that, I'll turn it over to Kerry to summarize our recent financial results and 2025 outlook. Thanks, Chris.

For the fourth quarter, our results beat consensus estimates for production, adjusted EBITDA, and discretionary cash flow. Adjusted EBITDA was $141,200,000 which was 4% higher than the prior quarter and reflected strong production and lower than expected cash G and A. Production was up 6% quarter over quarter averaging nearly 41,000 BOE per day. We had a 9% increase in net turned in line wells in the quarter. Which was driven by increased operator drilling and completion activity.

We closed on approximately $140,000,000 of acquisition late in the quarter. We are committed to returning capital to shareholders through cash dividends and opportunistic share repurchases. Our Board declared a fourth quarter cash dividend of $0.41 per share. Payable on March 28 and during the fourth quarter, we repurchased 643,000 shares for $12,900,000 equating to $0.08 per share in repurchases. Importantly, this represents a total return of capital of $0.49 per share. At year end, we had about $80,000,000 remaining under our $200,000,000 repurchase authorization.

Turning now to the balance sheet. We had $1,100,000,000 of debt outstanding, with $437,200,000 of availability under our revolving credit facility at year end 2024. Our borrowing base was increased by $75,000,000 to $925,000,000 and despite our $140,000,000 of cash acquisitions in the fourth quarter, liquidity only decreased by $15,000,000 As we look to 2025, we expect activity levels to remain consistent with last year and have good visibility via 45 net line of sight wells and commentary from operators in their activity We expect our oil production at the midpoint will be 18,500 barrels per day and total production will be just under 40,000 BOE per day at the midpoint. This represents a 3% increase over reported full year 2024 production. As a reminder, we do not forecast acquisitions on our published guidance. However, history shows that we consistently create value through blocking and tackling with high return acquisitions and our pipeline remains strong. Please reference our materials for additional details. I'll hand it back to Chris.

Thanks, Gary. Before taking your questions, let me quickly discuss how we define and measure success at Cthyo Sitio. Number one on the list is healthy deal flow. Have a proven team with relationships and technical experience across all the major U. S. Basins. Today, we continue to see consistent field flow and attractive opportunities that meet our criteria for risk adjusted returns. The continued market interest in M and A activity in the mineral space is in Some who have held their minerals for more than twenty years and now appear more open to selling. Many have been holding for yield, but are recognizing that basin maturity along with development activity levels suggest favorable timing for a sale. We are very selective and the deals we consider must clear a high bar. In 2024, evaluated on just 10% of those. From a net royalty acre standpoint, we acquired just 4% of what we screened. As a result, 2024 deals had a weighted average unlevered IRR of more than 15% and next twelve month cash flow yield exceeding 25%. Well above our underwrite thresholds. We will remain disciplined in our underwriting assumptions and will continue to look for the right deals to create value.

Second is growth per share.

We are focused on adding value on a per share basis.

Our fourth quarter production was up 14% year over year. 3%.

Since becoming public, we have increased production per debt adjusted share by more than 50% representing a 20% compound annual growth rate We will continue to use free cash flow to maintain our balance sheet and return meaningful cash to shareholders. Third on the list is efficiency as measured by cash G and A per BOE EBITDA margins, missing revenue [indiscernible] are in the early innings of realizing the full potential of our proprietary automation tools and applications that underpin our asset management system. Automation increases the value out of our professionals and maximizes the value of our assets. With this platform in place, we're positioned to seamlessly tack on additional assets supporting our margins and cost effective growth in the future. Over the last three years, we have been very selective in how we have grown our business. Today, we have scale that can be leveraged to the advantage of our owners. Recent investments in people and new technologies will create sustainable efficiencies in the years ahead. Closing, CITIO is in a strong and advantaged position today in the minerals industry Consolidation will continue and minerals assets will continue to migrate to bigger and more efficient companies like us.

We will continue to employ our proprietary practices to prudently manage our assets, maintain financial strength and create long term value for our [indiscernible] are now ready to take questions.

Thank you. Our first question is from Neil Dingmann. Matura Securities. Neil, your line is now open. Please go ahead. Good morning, guys. Just my first question just could you talk about your various marketed deals and just what and how those compare? Been a lot of market deals out there, how that compares to the CRISP number of deals that you all are able to complete?

Hi, good morning, Neil. It's Chris. Great to hear from you. Just a couple of comments on the the M and A environment. You noted that there's deals we value a robust year from deal flow standpoint. The important thing to highlight really is the consistency of how we're delivering on acquisition program. So you look at this the last couple of years quarter in quarter out, we continue to make these small and medium sized acquisitions. Our capital our job here really is to allocate this capital most efficiently. Our capital is flowing to highest rate of return opportunity. So you can tell by the statistics that we mentioned in the call, we looked hundreds of thousands of net world papers during the year and acquired at least 20,000 throughout the entire year. That's because those are the highest rated [indiscernible] IRRs around here because that is our North Star in terms of what guides us on all of our investment decisions. It's hard for people on the outside of the company wrap it heads around if we don't have all the data we have. So perhaps it helps to share some more information around where that shows up.

In the company. So it manifests itself in a couple of ways. One is when you look at the the high cash flow yield on the deals we did this year, as I mentioned in the call, cash flow yield over 25% next 12 basis for the deals we did in 2025. The other place that shows up is in production per debt adjusted share Since the time we've been public just since June of twenty twenty two, Our production per debt tested share has grown by a compounded annual growth rate of about 20% [indiscernible] when we look at the 2024 program, two of the deals we did out of the 16 were actual auction processes. The remaining 14 were based on ships we have and it's relationships with mineral owners and then it's supported by we have with the operators who occasionally share some information with us on line of sight activity, which helps underpin our underwriting. So Great job on the team this year at the deal. I'm really proud of what everybody accomplished here on the program. And the more important thing for us looking forward 2025, almost every bit is promising. The opportunities that in front of us is enormous, not just the sort of the art of the possible, but the actual tangible pipeline in front of us is large.

So we're working our way through it and we'll continue to allocate capital towards highest rate of return opportunities.

And then, listen, this is a second, just most operators now have plans out. I'm just wondering what is activity look like for remainder of the year versus what you all were expected? Thanks. Sorry, I had trouble hearing the question, Neil. I'm just wondering, most operators have the plans out. And I'm just wondering, Chris, based on sort of expectations, whether it's in the perm, DJ, you name it where your minerals are is activity about as you were expecting sort of start up the year and with the way that it looks for the remainder of the year?

Good question. Yes.

So we've been watching our operator announcements closely. And that does inform how we look at at our guidance for 2025, The good news is the bulk of our guidance, almost all of it is underpinned by [indiscernible] activity that's already commenced by the operators. So we don't have to believe a lot about [indiscernible] they're going to do with remaining inventory on our footprint. So in most of the cases, they've already spent some capital dollars to initiate some kind of activity. On our minerals. So the guidance you see from us, which shows about a 3% growth year over year at the midpoint of our guidance is informed by not only the operator comments they're making, but also by the actions they're taking on studying new wells and permitting new wells. As you think about how it relates to our acquisition program, we don't guide or include in our guidance any contribution from acquisitions. So anything we do with our acquisition program in 2025 will be over and above that organic growth rate. Hope that addresses your question now. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question is from Derek Witt from Texas Capital. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Thanks and good morning all and congrats on a strong year end closing update.

Thanks, Derek. For my first For my first question, I wanted to build on Mel's question on guidance. As outlined, your 2025 guidance implies maintenance level activity versus Q4. While your line of sight activity implies growth. How would you frame your production trajectory And were there any outsized contributions from missing revenue or M and A led to a stronger than expected Q4? [indiscernible] Thanks. So the missing revenue effort we have is really to collect payments that we are already owed and we already show in our revenue line. So that doesn't result in incremental revenue, but it result in incremental cash recovered that we are owed. And oftentimes requires an extraordinary effort to recover. When we think about When we think about the 2025 production We do see contribution from Primarily the Permian, some from the DJ Basin as well. A lot of the activity we've done in recent years in the DJ Basin has been skewed more towards line of sight development. So when we think about longer term and more duration, it really is the Permian is where activity will largely come from. And as we look at our footprint there, if you just exclude New Mexico, we have a lighter footprint Zack has some statistics that we can share with you on our on our percentage coverage.

We talked about the entire Permian Basin. We cover about 36% of the entire Permian Basin. But then when you narrow it down to where our asset concentration is within that that can cover some specifics for us.

Yes. So we have at least [indiscernible] [indiscernible] And around 16% in New Mexico, and its total basin coverage around 36%.

Terrific. And then maybe leaning in on your commentary on the robust fuel flow for 2025 Your M and A focus in recent quarters has been as you noted, on the Permian and DJ, First kind of part of this question is does the more constructive natural gas backdrop change the size of the opportunity set where your teams are focused? And then more broadly and thinking about the value of your differentiated AI driven asset management system, Does that system change how you think about buying diversified packages where the market opportunity could be greater for the machine you've built Yes, thanks. So I think the market opportunity for the investments we've made in people is systems really lends itself to scale. I don't think it any particular advantage for greater geographic diversification it really is just an advantage of scale. So the investments we've made will pay off. Significantly as we continue to scale this business. It's really remarkable how we can just layer in more ones and zeros into our system that we've built that's almost infinitely scalable. I think about the natural gas backed up, I got this question over over email from a shareholder as well.

It's pretty favorable when you look at the gas macro. So global gas demand and then you have domestic gas demand from increased power generation needs for the electrification of everything [indiscernible] And that's not a near term that's probably several years away, but it's a great macro tailwind for perpetual assets like ours. And so we look at our portfolio and we don't look at ourselves as white on natural gas because we do have quite a bit of natural gas exposure in the Permian and to a lesser extent in the DJ Basin just given size of those footprints. Jared has some statistics that you might find interesting on the trends in natural gas in the Permian. But not a lot of people are talking about, but it's a reality. So I'll turn it over to Jared.

Yes, Derek. One thing that we've been looking at, we recently is trends in percent oil across the Permian over time. So run these numbers internally and you also can find them at the short term at GLD at the EIA. If you go back to around 2021, the Permian was around 63% oil and today it's around 60% oil. So you're seeing nearly 1% a year of oil dropping in the Permian and it's more pronounced in the Midland Basin.

So that's something that we're looking at that not a lot of people are seeing.

And with us having around half of our revenue from the Delaware Basin, which has less of this effect compared to the Midland, That's good for us, but we obviously have exposure to the Midland Basin. So we're looking at that not only from an asset management perspective, but also how we think about our guidance. So that's why this year you'll see a little bit less of the oil percentage for the year.

That's underpinned by the line of sight wells as well as what we're seeing on the PDP base that we already have. And I think your other question you mentioned, I'll just kind of jump in here on the on AI and how it affects acquisitions. Our acquisition underwriting is not explicitly exposed to the tools that we built that utilize AI. But the great news about that is and probably one of the funnest parts of our business is once we acquire something, we're able to go back and recover revenue and barrels and dollars that the previous owners who were not actively managing it missed. So the asset management tools that we have are really great way to improves the management of the acquisitions of the operating house. So that's something that for every single acquisition that we do that we enjoy. Working on And Derek, one other comment I'll make just on the natural gas pricing part of your question. We're really encouraged to see the midstream companies really staying ahead of [indiscernible] The propensity for the Permian to see wider basis differentials So we're thrilled to see Blackcomb and Warrior projects underway and expect to see more announcements like that at the extent that Derek just walked through continue to manifest themselves into reality.

That's helpful. Thanks for your time.

Thank you. Our next question is from Jared Gareau from Stephens. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning guys and thanks for taking my question. First one is another one in regards to natural gas.

Some of the Appalachia operators have provided guidance for increased gas production in the basin, whether it be this year over the next few years. Can you provide any color as to if you looked at the mineral deals in Appalachia or what do you see the deal flow in that basin? [indiscernible] Yes, thanks for the question. We used to own some assets in Appalachia The particular assets that we owned were relatively in compared to the rest of our portfolio. And we had a pretty unique opportunity to make a high rated return acquisition. So again, in our position as capital allocators, we decided to park with those assets and use those proceeds to fund the DJ Basin acquisition we did. They closed on April four of of twenty twenty four. So we've been in Appalachia before. We think the world of the region as a geologic province. We're very, very fortunate as a that resource and it's an enormous resource in place. There's very healthy operators in the region. As a mineral owner, there's a a unique set of challenges for owning minerals in Appalachia. And a lot of it centers around the land situation I can turn the call over to Britton James from our VP of Land to describe some of those Yes.

Thanks, Chris. John, when we have on the land side, I'm trying to guide and share information publicly is that oftentimes the way it's operated is in space and put their showing things in place, make it challenging for us to see what is going to happen in future development. Perfect. Thanks for the color.

And then my second one is, could you give us some thoughts on strategic priority for free cash flow allocation 2025? Particularly regarding debt reduction, dividends, buybacks, and investments in growth opportunities. Thank you. [indiscernible] first and foremost priority is returning capital to our shareholders. That's a really powerful business model that's capable of returning a lot of capital to shareholders. In fact, We've returned over $840,000,000 to shareholders through dividends and buybacks just in the short time we've been managing this company. And I would expect this year with the commodity price environment we're in today, for that number to exceed $1,000,000,000 So, so far we've returned approximately 30% of our market cap to our shareholders in a very short period of time. So it's a really powerful business model to be able to return that much capital to shareholders. That said, there's also a very remarkable opportunity to reinvest. As I mentioned, these acquisition opportunities that are in front of us present really compelling rate of return opportunities for reinvestment. So we do look to use the retained capital for two purposes. One is to reinvest in high rate of return and creative acquisitions And then also maintaining our very strong balance sheet.

It's important to note that our cost of capital turned out to be an advantage for us. And as we look at I look at the bond market and the investors there are speaking with the price action you look at our yield on our existing bonds and it's close to 6% and that's a really cost of capital relative to where we were in our not too long ago when our notes back in 2022 yield in excess of 10%. So So remarkable improvement in our cost of capital, We have tremendous amount of liquidity over $400,000,000 of liquidity. Our cash interest expense per BOE is down 17 the and reinvesting in high rate of return acquisitions is also important. Thanks for taking my questions. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question is from Tim Rezmann from KeyBanc. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Good morning folks and thanks for taking my questions. First one was a housekeeping one. I was curious if you could provide some color behind the cash G and A increase. It looks like it's up about 25% year over year.

Don't know if that's just Alyssa doing a good job with contract negotiations or if there's something more there. Any color would be helpful. Thanks, Dan.

Appreciate the question. So does Melissa. Now the I think you've seen a couple things. One is we've made the investments in P1 systems that allow us to scale a lot larger than where we are right now. The percentage that you mentioned, obviously, is a large percentage. But when we look at the absolute dollar increase year over year, talking about a $6,000,000 or $7,000,000 increase on a $4,000,000,000 enterprise. So I think you're talking about a lot of small numbers. Another interesting factoid is that our cash G and A for the entire year is effectively paid for by the first three weeks of royalty revenue for the year. So it's a remarkably scalable business from a G and A standpoint and with the investments made or we're very optimistic about the future.

Okay. Okay. That makes sense. As my follow-up, you've Good pretty successful playing small ball with the non marketed deals. What's been interesting is you've had a willingness to go into kind of the DJ Basin recognizing strong economics there when you have permitted wells. There's a large operator. There's been discussions about potential mineral sale. In that area with chatter around $1,000,000,000 [indiscernible] can you provide any comments on that news or your willingness to go that big for the for the right deal?

Yes. I think it's less about how big the deal is and how more about how big the returns are. So Risk adjusted returns have to compensate us for outlaying capital. So we look at large acquisitions all the time in our existing basins and other basins but the risk adjusted returns have just been better on these deals we've executed on. So that's how we've done it. The small deals that we've done and the DJ Basin in particular have been heavily skewed towards existing production and spot wells and then permits that are within the caps that have been approved. So it's from our standpoint, a proper risk adjusted return And then the Permian program looks a lot like what you've seen from us in prior years with a good balance of existing production [indiscernible] years and years of remaining inventory, a lot more duration than we'd see anywhere else.

Okay. Thanks. And if I could just sneak a follow-up and just to kind of close the loop on the acquisitions in the fourth quarter. Your oil SKU went down a bit Can you just it seemed like that was from those acquisitions. Is that what's driving that lower oil SKU? You talked about the maturation of the Midland, but is that acquisition kind of the big driver? Of that?

Yes, that was definitely a component of it. But I think the important thing to note is that even without the acquisitions, we would have been we would have been right around the midpoint of the guidance on oil. So it's not like the oils aren't coming through without acquisitions. We're exceeding on oil for the full year from our our guidance, but we're exceeding by a wider margin on natural gas for the dynamics that Jared walked through Okay. [indiscernible] Thanks Tim. Thank you. Our next question is from Noel Parks from Tarry Brothers Investment.

Hi, good morning. Just a couple, I apologize, you touched on this already. But with the deal environment If we did have ahead of us a period of sustained higher prices, even for oil or gas, [indiscernible] demand is good on the macro level and we wind up sort of [indiscernible] the higher end of recent trading ranges. Is that helpful or more hurtful as far as bid asking and getting people to Agreement on deals.

It's a really good question because we've looked at this phenomenon of the interplay between commodity price environment or movement and acquisition activity and sort of the gap between the bid and the ask on acquisitions What we found is the least constructive environment for us is a rapidly declining price environment. That's where we find that sellers tend to hold on to price expectations from just recent history. Stable prices are adequate for us to transact in and rising price environments are adequate as well. So say the only one unfavorable is a rapidly declining price environment. But as you mentioned for what we've seen for quite a period now It's been a a healthy, stable environment, maybe trending upward on natural gas more than oil, supportive for M and A activity.

Great. Thanks. And Again, we've seen more on the gas side. It's been such a seasonally this year for Natgas. And we look those the gas operators reporting year over year numbers, it looks like much better comps compared to the tough winter last year. So We definitely have seen also alongside capital discipline this greater willingness to use curtailments as a way to to address volatility, especially dominant volatility building docks and so forth. And do you sort of see just your diversification by Nathan by operator being the best defense against even increased lumpiness when when operators react to what they see [indiscernible] Yes, we do the diversification of the strength for a lot of reasons. But if you just look at our revenue for 2024, about 84% of it was oil. So with operators with that [indiscernible] there's almost not a gas price at which they would shut in their oil wells. So we're really not exposed to the types of geographic regions where operators would shut in production because of just the gas prices Clearly, we would like gas prices to be stable and and healthy for operators to produce, but we're really not exposed to that kind of environment.

Great. Thanks a lot.

Thank you.

Thank you. This concludes our Q and A session. And consequently, today's call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.