Good day, and welcome to the investor presentation regarding Chief Acquisition Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you will press star then one on your touchtone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note today's event is being recorded. I'd now like to turn the conference over to Brad Sylvester, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you, Rocco. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our call today to discuss Chesapeake's Acquisition of Chief and the S ale of our Powder River Basin Assets. Hopefully, you've had a chance to review our press release and the updated investor presentation that we posted to our website this morning. During this morning's call, we will be making forward-looking statements which consist of statements that cannot be confirmed by reference to existing information, including statements regarding our beliefs, goals, expectations, forecasts, projections, and future performance, and the assumptions underlying such statements. Please note that there are a number of factors that will cause actual results to differ materially from our forward-looking statements, including the factors identified and discussed in our press release today and in other SEC filings.
Please recognize that except as required by applicable law, we undertake no duty to update any forward-looking statements, and you should not place undue reliance on such statements. We may also refer to some non-GAAP financial measures, which help facilitate comparisons across periods and with peers. For any non-GAAP measure we use, a reconciliation to the nearest corresponding GAAP measure can be found on our website. With me on the call today are Domenic Dell'Osso, Mohit Singh, and Tim Beard. Domenic will give a brief overview of the transactions, and then we will open up the teleconference for Q&A. With that, thank you again, and I will now turn the teleconference over to Domenic .
Good morning, everyone, and thanks for taking the time on short notice for a call. This is a really big day for Chesapeake. We're very excited to have announced these transactions concurrently and know that we've simplified our portfolio and redefined the core assets of Chesapeake. With that simplification, we can allocate our people and our capital optimally across our three greatest assets. Those assets being the Marcellus, Haynesville, and Eagle Ford, all of which have the scale and quality to deliver sustainable cash flow through cycles. Focusing on the Chief transaction a little bit, this transaction, of course, meets the non-negotiables that we've carefully defined for the market. Those non-negotiables are focused on making the company better, not just bigger.
One of the very unique things about the Marcellus asset in our portfolio, and of course, similar to Chief, which is immediately adjacent to us, is that it's a highly capital-efficient asset with minimal investment needed to maintain production levels. There's immediate synergies available in the neighborhood of $50 million-$70 million cash synergies in the first year. We'll use this to accelerate cash return to shareholders by increasing the base dividend by 14% to $2 a share, and that allows us to anticipate paying $900 million-$1.1 billion in total dividends now in 2022, even after the sale of the Power. Continuing on with the non-negotiables, we didn't overpay. We think it's an attractive price relative to recent transactions in the basin and Appalachian public trading multiples.
We're gonna talk about this more in a few minutes, but it does give us incremental capacity to the constrained market as that is the Marcellus and allows us to grow the combined production base of Chesapeake and Chief in an attractive way. We talked about protecting the balance sheet, and with this transaction, we're using about $2 billion of cash, which allows us to enhance returns for shareholders on the transaction, but still keep debt below one times. Of course, given that this transaction, along with our existing business, generates a tremendous amount of free cash flow, we'll be building cash flow on the year, and that net debt will fall again. The deal is clearly accreted to key metrics. It's accreted to cash flow per share, free cash flow per share, and free cash flow yield.
It lowers our cost structure attractively across LOE, GP&T, and G&A per unit. Lastly, on the non-negotiables, it lowers our emissions profile. This is a dry gas asset, and one of the ways that we'll point to measuring that is that the methane intensity of our business will now be 15% less than our last reported 2020 number. Again, a really important set of non-negotiables that we think this transaction checks every box. Let's talk a little bit about what this means for Expand Energy going forward. We had highlighted coming out of bankruptcy that we wanted to refocus our portfolio, and we've achieved that here. In short, we have the portfolio we want to succeed and create differential returns for shareholders and to deliver affordable, reliable, and lower carbon energy to consumers.
Going forward, we'll be able to focus on achieving the forecasted synergies associated with this transaction as well as the acquisition of Vine and generating attractive returns with the capital deployed to buy these great assets. This means we'll be taking a pause at looking at additional acquisitions. Frankly, it's hard to imagine another deal meeting the high bar of our non-negotiables. I'd like to turn to our slide deck now and highlight a few things across these slides. I'm gonna start with slide number three, which is a map. This map, we think, really highlights the simplicity we've created in our portfolio. We have three great assets, all of which have great returns, garner capital, and have the scale to compete. The next slide has a lot of data.
I've touched on a number of these features in this transaction, and we'll be able to talk more about all of them in the coming weeks. I did wanna highlight that the free cash flow of the company is now sitting at a projected $9 billion over the next five years. That's a pretty tremendous number given the size of our market cap. We'll use that increase in cash flow to increase the base dividend by 14% and anticipate total dividends of $900 million-$1.1 billion in 2022. Slide 5 highlights some key metrics for the Chief acquisition, as well as our combined Marcellus Shale position for Chesapeake.
There's 1,500 total undeveloped locations in our Marcellus portfolio now, with over 500 undeveloped premium locations defined with 50% rate of return of $2.50 gas. The asset produces over 800 million cubic feet a day of gas and has projected $820 million of EBITDAX in 2022 before hedges. Tremendous asset that generates a lot of asset-level free cash flow. You can see that free cash flow projection of nearly $600 million in 2022 for the asset, and almost $1.5 billion for Chesapeake as a whole now pro forma. The next slide, we have a map of the marketing picture, and this is really probably the most exciting part of this deal to us.
This is the thing that makes this transaction really unique for what opportunities we've seen in the market and particularly for what we bring to the table in the way of synergies. The map really highlights that the Chesapeake and Chief acreage fit hand in glove right next to each other. What may be a little bit less obvious and is really important to the deal is that we share a lot of gathering system capacity here, and we gain a lot of access to incremental delivery points in the marketing across the basin. We gain access to delivery points on Tennessee Gas, on Transco, and Atlantic Sunrise.
What that means is that we have access to better out-of-basin pricing, and we can manage our production and our pressure across these systems better to open up incremental capacity on a combined basis that wasn't available individually to have an incremental 200 million cubic feet a day gross of capacity. We talked about how constrained the market is and how limited we were in our ability to grow our Marcellus asset, and this deal provides a solution. On slide 7, we highlight our dividend program, and we think it's a best-in-class program across the industry. We'll sit pro forma at a 13% yield of total dividends projected with our variable program today.
Now, I'd love in future calls to not be at the high end of this bar chart here, and have the price of the stock better reflect the dividend profile that we have today. Nonetheless, this is a tremendous value that's available. Then I'll also highlight that this doesn't impact our ability to meet the goal of having a billion-dollar buyback before the end of 2023. If anything, this enhances it given the incremental cash flow provided by the transaction. On Slide 8, we detail the synergies. Again, $50 million-$70 million in cash synergies from the Chief transaction immediately. That's on top of the $50 million that we announced previously from Vine.
We thought it was important to highlight the combined synergies as we've highlighted what we believe the value in consolidation for the industry is, and what opportunities we've had by seeking to gain scale in our assets. Scale and consolidation has to be about getting better, not bigger. Not only have we highlighted these synergies, but in both cases, we've been able to highlight our confidence in those synergies with a dividend increase. Slide 9, we give you our ESG profile. We've talked about the company's desire to be net zero. This is certainly a step in that direction as we add another dry gas asset with great ESG metrics, and we continue our program of reducing our GHG profile across our business through the capital that we're spending in 2022. On slide 10, we have our updated outlook.
Just a couple of things I'd like to highlight for you here. There's obviously a lot of numbers, but our cost structure is getting better. Our cost structure continues to grind lower, and we think that's really important as we create a sustainable business and sustainable cash flow over time. That results in higher EBITDAX. I'll just point out to you that we only have nine-month contribution from Chief in this outlook. On a run rate basis, the impact from the Chief acquisition is greater. Then lastly, on this page, I would highlight the accretive nature of this deal with the operating cash flow per share, free cash flow per share, and free cash flow yield. Very attractive, very accretive. Then lastly, I'll close with going back to our non-negotiables.
We just can't reiterate enough how much these mean to us and how we think about whether or not the opportunity for consolidation is value-adding to our company and to our shareholders. We didn't overpay. We think this deal is attractive relative to the NAV, recent transactions, and the public trading multiples. We protected the balance sheet. We've been able to use balance sheet capacity to enhance returns and stay under 1x leverage. It's attractive to the key metrics as I've highlighted. It lowers our emissions profile.
Again, most importantly, particularly given the capital-efficient nature of the asset, this deal makes us better, not just bigger. I'd like to go ahead and open up the call for Q&A and just remind everyone that joining us this morning is our new CFO, Mohit Singh, who some of you have had an opportunity to talk to and will be participating in Q&A and in all investor communications with us going forward. I'd also like to welcome to our team in a concurrent announcement this morning, Josh Viets, who will be joining us next week as Chief Operating Officer. Josh is coming to us from ConocoPhillips after a lengthy career there, being an integral part of turning that company into one of the better operators in the industry, and we're thrilled to have him join our team. Operator, with that, I'd like to open it up for questions.
Thank you. If you'd like to ask a question, please press Star then one on your touchtone phone. If you're using a speakerphone, we ask that you please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press Star then two. Today's first question comes from Charles Meade at Johnson Rice. Please go ahead. Pardon me, it looks like we have lost his line, so we'll go down to our next question, which comes from Doug Leggate with Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Domenic , can you hear me okay?
Yeah. Can hear you just fine. Morning, Doug.
Sounds like you can. Okay. Couple of things if I may. I think about this deal. I'm not. I really could care less about the multiples of recent transactions or the trading multiples of other companies, because to me, the value is about money in, money out. Can you kinda lay out for us what you see as the cumulative sustaining free cash flow of the deal? It looks like versus your prior guidance of $6 billion, you're now talking $9 billion. How much of that is coming from the deal through 2025, and what is the sustainable inventory that you think you're acquiring on a sustainable free cash flow basis?
Yeah. We love this deal for all of those reasons that you just described, Doug. When we think about the sustainable cash flow of this business going forward, again, the business is generating 835 million cubic feet a day of gas, which results in $850 million of EBITDA in 2022 before hedges. If we wanna think about the sustaining cash flow over time, I certainly think you should consider it before hedges. Now, there's about neighborhood of $200 million of negative hedge mark-to-market in 2022, but the ongoing capacity of the business is there at that $850. Now, the capital efficiency of this asset is just really attractive. We'll run two rigs this year on it because that's the program that we're picking up.
Going forward, it's going to be one to two rigs to maintain that productive capacity over the next many years. When you think about that's, you know, call it just over $100 million to just over $200 million of annual CapEx, depending on whether you're at one or two rigs, to generate over $800 million in EBITDA at the current deck. This is an incredibly capital-efficient asset, and it obviously bumped our total free cash flow of the company by a large amount. The five-year free cash flow contribution from this asset alone is greater than $1.5 billion.
Okay. That's a five year or through 2025?
That's a five year.
Okay. So 26. Okay, thank you. My follow-up is, I'm sorry, I'm gonna challenge both you and Mo on this a little bit. It's a bit of a provocative question, but do you think your stock is undervalued?
We do think our stock is undervalued.
Okay. Why then with a depleting asset base with a finite inventory, would you give all the money away in variable dividends rather than buy back your stock? My point is, I don't really see the variable dividends get capitalized, Domenic , so why would you talk about a variable dividend yield when you could essentially buy in all the shares that you've just issued, without breaking the cap if you believe your stock is undervalued?
Sure. You know, we kinda like this debate. This is a debate that we hear a lot of different opinions about on both sides of. We have gone with a bit of an all-of-the-above approach in the way that we think about returning cash to shareholders. The reason that I think it's important to include a variable dividend in that all-of-the-above approach as opposed to going all with a buyback is that there is cyclicality in the way that our stocks trade, and there is value in the predictability of knowing that the dividends can be estimated with a formula. You have to have a model for the company, but if you have that model, then you can have a predictable amount of cash returned to shareholders with that formula.
We think there's real value in that, particularly for an industry that has struggled to create free cash and be able to deliver it to shareholders over time. Now, that said, as we rolled that out last summer, we also noted that we were generating incremental cash flow beyond what that variable would deliver back to shareholders. We did feel that our stock was undervalued, and so we instituted a buyback program on top of it.
Yeah, we can take the debate offline, but I just don't think that in an E&P business you're gonna get any recognition beyond attracting the wrong type of shareholder for a variable distribution. You're right. The value is the DCF, the forward cash flow, but variables to me are backward looking. We can take it offline, but I take your point. Thanks so much, Domenic .
Thanks, Doug.
The next question today comes from Lloyd Byrne at UBS. Please go ahead.
Hey, fellas. How are you guys?
Morning, Lloyd.
Domenic , you used the words, hard to imagine and non-negotiable. You know, give ups going forward on future deals. I don't wanna put words in your mouth, but it sounds like it's about executing now. I think the market's been waiting for you guys to reposition and move forward. With $9 billion of free cash, is that kind of the strategy now is figure out how to generate that cash and then return it to the shareholders?
Yeah. Now, I mean, you know, to Doug's point a few minutes ago, when you say generate that cash and return to shareholders, we intend to be an ongoing operating business. We don't intend to be a blowdown business. But yes, to, I think, answer the underlying question here, we like our portfolio. We don't believe we need to be out seeking incremental adds to the portfolio. We are comfortable with the assets we own today, and we're pausing from M&A as a result of that. It is about execution.
The whole purpose in getting our portfolio right-sized and centered around assets that we want to own is that we believe we can more efficiently deploy resources across our business to enhance value for shareholders relative to what we would do with a more diverse portfolio than as we've had in the past. We've got work to go do to achieve that. We need to reallocate those resources. We need to deliver on the synergies that we've projected here and then go out and create incremental synergies. We think we have the portfolio to do that now. We're satisfied with what we own, and we plan to turn our focus towards execution.
Perfect. Thank you. As a follow-up, you mentioned in the beginning, Marcellus, Haynesville and Eagle Ford. Brazos, are you still in the "we're gonna test it, see what we get and then make a decision"?
Well, Josh, we have a fair amount of confidence in what we're seeing in Brazos Valley, particularly at wider spacing. We will always, you know, maintain the notion that if an asset isn't performing, we can think differently about it. But right now, we're very comfortable with what we're doing in the Brazos. We're going to talk about and operate our Eagle Ford asset as one broader basin of Eagle Ford. Similar geology, similar allocation of capital. We think we can optimize our capital allocation by managing that capital across those two parts of our company, together. We're gonna go down the path of seeing exactly what the development in Brazos Valley presents to us this year, just like we've talked about over the last several months.
That will determine how much of that capital gets allocated into the northern part of the asset. You know, ultimately, if we chose to trim part of that off, we could do it, but we're pretty confident in what we expect to have happen.
That's great. Thank you. Congratulations, guys.
Thanks, Will.
Thank you. Our next question today comes from Josh Silverstein at Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Good morning, guys. Two questions for you. I guess first just following up on Doug's thing from the $9 billion of free cash flow. I guess you outlined $5 billion of total dividends, leaving about $4 billion left in free cash flow over the next five years or so. Do you see a step up in the $1 billion buyback that you guys have over time? Could it get more aggressive than that, or do you actually wanna have that split kind of half, you know, to the buyback and then half to debt reduction?
Yeah. Thanks for that question, Josh. Good morning. This is Mohit Singh. Glad to be on the call on an exciting day today. To address your question, you know, the way, as Domenic said before, we are very focused on shareholder yield, and trying to do it through the base dividend and the variable dividend is obviously that makes a ton of sense. But at the same time, we are complementing it with the share buyback. As the business generates more cash, we clearly are not seeking to sit on that cash. We would love to return it back to the shareholders. That's something that we actively discuss with the board and internally. More details to come, but again, the focus is on returning it back to the investors.
Okay. Second thing was, you mentioned before about kind of the sustaining number of, called the 800-900 Mcf a day, but you also suggested that the midstream footprint will allow you to grow. If you think about, you know, the combined net bases around, you know, two Bcf a day, you add the 200 MMcfe a day of additional flexibility, do you see yourself actually growing into that additional capacity, or is that just there for added flexibility at some point?
No, we see us growing into that. In fact, the first part of it is pretty exciting. We think we'll be able to increase volumes delivered just by managing pressures across the assets more efficiently, and managing delivery across those incremental delivery points that we'll have access to. So some of that is going to come just from flowing more gas that sits behind pressure today. And then we'll be able to drill incremental wells over the next, you know, year plus to fill the rest of that capacity. It'll take us a little bit of time to get all the way to use all of it.
We think, you know, certainly by the end of 2023, if not before, we would be able to use up that capacity and deliver the full amount to the market.
Great. Thanks, guys.
Our next question today comes from Neal Dingmann at Truist Securities. Please go ahead.
Morning, guys, and congrats. Domenic , just a question. Could you talk about was there any FT around the Chief assets ? I see you talked about that maybe firstly.
I'm sorry, Neal, you asked if there's any what?
On firm transportation, what kind of a sort of FT they had in mind?
Yeah, sorry. Yes, they have access to Atlantic Sunrise. We're pleased about that. We have the ability to get, obviously, better pricing off of that than we get through a lot of our in-basin prices. They also deliver more volumes to Leidy, where we deliver more volumes to the TGP Marcellus Zn 4 index. We can optimize the flow towards Leidy and have incremental flow across the entire asset, which we feel great about. Yeah, they have a nice marketing portfolio. Some of it is through actual FT, some of it is through firm sales. But it's a good portfolio, and the weighted average increase of our volumes that get out of basin pricing is going up pretty nicely to about 45%.
Just how it's kept there. You weren't adding any infrastructure on this deal. I didn't really see any on this.
That's correct.
Okay. Then lastly, just on hedges, what's your thought? I didn't see anything, maybe I missed this, just your thought now on you add hedges around this, your thought. You know what, just sort of overall hedging on the portfolio post this deal.
Neal, I'll take that. Thanks for the question. We've talked to you previously about our existing hedge book. As part of the transaction, we will be taking on the hedges that Chief has currently in place. In addition to that, we are actively looking at opportunistically layering in some incremental hedges to just protect our PDP.
Yeah, makes sense. Thanks, guys.
Thank you.
Our next question today comes from Charles Meade at Johnson Rice. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Domenic . I'm sorry for not showing up earlier when you called my name. I went to pick up my receiver and hung up instead.
Oh, no worries, Charles.
You can laugh at me after we hang up. I may have missed this, but I wondered if you could give us maybe a few more parameters about how to think about the PDP value of the Chief assets, either at the strip or at a flat price or however you guys may have evaluated it.
Sure. You know, PDP value here is pretty significant, but obviously the development has a lot of value as well. PDP value on this asset we estimate at about $1.7 billion, Charles.
Got it. Okay. That is using like a strip from, you know, a couple weeks ago, or is that a flat price, or what's the? Or should we just think about it kind of generically at, like, $3.50 or something like that?
It's a strip for, you know, five years and then flat. That's kind of.
Got it.
pretty typical.
Got it.
on how we would evaluate that, so.
Got it.
Look, the NAV of this asset, as we think about it, and we think about what we're buying, we believe is well above the purchase price, obviously. PDP is an important component of that. When we think about development and where we have confidence and how we achieve value from development, this is an asset we know extremely well. We operate some of the locations in this, in this undeveloped acreage. The rest is immediately adjacent to us. We understand the geology. We understand the drilling. We know the cost structure. We think there's just a tremendous amount of value here.
Yeah. On the face of it really seems like an obvious fit. But if I go back to maybe another facet of that and something you've talked about a couple times already, this $200 million gross that's available just from kind of a optimization or the combination of your midstream reference. So am I thinking about this right, if it's $200 million gross, that's about probably $75 million net to you guys? And I know in your slide presentation you said $23 million, but it sounds like that's kind of a something that you will probably achieve over the course of 2022 as you kind of identify what those points of flexibility are and you know, not just physically, but also within your contract structures.
Yeah. It's a little bit more than 75, a little closer to 100, not quite 100. Yes, we do need a little bit of time to move some things around physically and deliver into those other access points. We have to take advantage of some options that exist in those contracts and work with our midstream providers to set all of that up. As we do the first part of it, manage production higher just through pressure optimization, then we'll add some volumes through drilling. Yeah, we, you know, we've said by 2023, but, you know, certainly we'd like to be there sooner.
Great. Thank you, Domenic , and congratulations on both these moves.
Thank you.
Our next question today comes from Matthew Portillo with TPH. Please go ahead.
Good morning, all.
Morning, Matt.
Just a quick question on the balance sheet. You're levering up here a bit to do the transaction. How do you think about your absolute leverage targets in terms of absolute debt moving forward over the next few years, and where would you like that to settle?
Yeah. I'll take that, Matt. Thanks for the question. The way we think about it is, again, I'll frame it back to the five non-negotiables that we have. We kind of think of it in terms of the gearing metric, which is net debt to EBITDA. What we publicly said is one turn is a boundary condition that we don't want to breach. As part of this transaction, as we said, since we're paying $2 billion in cash, the net debt to EBITDA does increase to about 0.8 turns, still comfortably below the level where we'd like to keep it. As business generates more cash, then we organically will just delever over time. The way we think about it, Matt, to answer your question, is in terms of the net debt to EBITDA metric.
Perfect. Maybe layering into that, if you're comfortable with the absolute debt outstanding, is it fair to assume that the priority for your free cash flow in 2022 will be essentially the common dividend plus the variable dividend, but you'll still be able to execute on the buyback even though you're adding some leverage into the system today?
Absolutely. Yes. That's the status quo plan is to service the base dividend, the variable dividend, and also buyback. Even after, I mean, this is the strength of the business and the cash flows that we have from the acquisition and the base business that we still, despite doing all of that, we still delever over time.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Our next question today comes from David Heikkinen with Pickering Energy Partners. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everybody. On the Powder sale, do you expect to take a gain or a loss, and can you quantify that for us?
We do have a tax loss here. One of the things you'll note in our updated outlook, Dave, is that our cash taxes actually go down a bit when you look at it pro forma the Powder transaction. There is a modest tax loss on that transaction.
Got it. I guess the 200 million a day, it looks like Chief has declined some on a gross basis, just pulling what data there is. You really are in a debottlenecking mode. Can you flash the 200 into what's debottlenecking and what's incremental capital, 40%-50%? Or is that. That'd just be helpful to see, you know, where exactly numbers.
Yeah, I think you should consider it to be approximately 50/50, Dave.
Okay, perfect. That was it.
Well, a little bit imprecise, but we have to see exactly how the pressures open up to us.
No, that's helpful. Yeah. Thanks, guys.
Our next question today comes from Noel Parks with Tuohy Brothers. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning.
Good morning.
Just a couple questions. One, would you say Chief has followed a similar drilling and completion philosophy as you have over their acreage? Just wondering how much in sync they were and what the opportunities might be, if any, for incremental efficiencies as you bring them into the fold.
Hey, Noel. Thanks for the question. This is Tim Beard. I would generally say yes, that Chief has followed basically very similar paths to many others in the basin, including us. I do think there's some capital efficiencies that we'll see over time. As we look at what they were doing on a per foot basis, we see probably between 5%-10% that we think we can reduce those capital costs per well. Obviously, we'll learn from these folks as well, right? These are great people that have developed the asset quite well. We're proud of what our team's done, but we also look across the fence and we see great things that these folks have done as well. We're anxious to get with the team, learn from those folks.
We do think there's going to be some efficiencies because we'll have about five rigs, four to five running in the basin, you know, one to two frack crews throughout the year. There's gonna be some efficiencies that we gain, and we look forward to those efficiencies. As I said, we look forward also to talking to the folks at Chief and learning from them as well.
Great. Thanks. I was just wondering what Chief had done on emissions or if they've done any work towards RSG certification and what that might look like going forward.
Yeah, good question. Chief had not started that process yet, and so we've highlighted in the presentation that we expect to incorporate them into our certification process. We had noted previously that our certification for the Marcellus, we expect it to be finished in the second quarter of this year. It's our hope to pull them into that and have their assets included in the certification by the end of this year. We'll be starting essentially from scratch there, so just have a little bit of work to do. You know, we know that Chief, being an adjacent operator, we know they're a really high-quality operator.
We don't anticipate a whole lot of challenge there other than just some work to do with the certifying group to get it up to speed and get the information to them and bring them along. Just take some time.
Great. If I can just throw in one more. With the overlap and the adjacency of their acreage, just curious if you had done much land work with them in the past. Are you gonna see significant number of locations with increased lateral length as a result of the combination?
We've had a really good relationship with Chief over the years, and we've done some swaps. Anytime you put things like this together, there are things that open up and you have the opportunity to look at more. We see those kinds of synergies as being, you know, ongoing operational headache-removing type synergies. Not gigantic value drivers, but they make our business easier and therefore better every day.
Great. Thanks a lot.
Our next question today comes from Gregg Brody at Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Good morning, guys. Thanks for getting the announcement out.
Just a follow-up here on the debt questions. You talked about de-leveraging. Is there a plan to pay down some of the revolver with cash flow here, or are you comfortable with the current debt levels? Just in general, where is your revolver today pro forma for all this?
Yeah. I'll take that, Greg. This is Mohit. The revolver is currently undrawn, so we have full $1 billion and $1.75 billion of capacity on it. It is undrawn as part of this transaction. One of the very many things we like is the fact that we are doing Powder River at the same time as Chief. From a cash and liquidity perspective, the proceeds coming in from the divestiture help defray some of the costs that you had to pay. Actually, when you look at it on a pro forma basis, the actual drawdown on the revolver would be sub $500 million. We are very comfortable with that level. It still retains a lot of liquidity and undrawn capacity on it.
after paying the base and the variable dividend and also doing some of the incremental share buyback that we have talked about, there's still cash flow left to pay that drawdown down in pretty quick order.
That's really helpful. Just one question on the PRB asset. I think you gave a free cash flow number for the next five years from the Marcellus acquisition. What's the trade-off here? How much did you give up by selling the PRB?
Not a huge amount. You can see again, we gave an outlook where we updated our outlook for the PRB sale in the middle column. You can see that, you know, the EBITDA impact was relatively minimal. We didn't have a lot of CapEx going to that asset, but we also, because we didn't have a lot of CapEx going to that asset, would have forecasted that in our hands, that asset would have declined. It's not a huge number, and certainly Chief is a big positive too.
Great. That's really helpful. Thanks for your time, guys.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes our question and answer session. I'd like to turn the conference back over to the management team for any final remarks.
Great. Well, again, really excited about the combination of these transactions today for Chesapeake. Really excited about what it means for the company going forward. We've been hard at work trying to improve upon our portfolio and present to shareholders the company that will be ready to operate for the long term. We think we've done that today. We've added a really talented member to our management team that we're excited to get on board, and we look forward to executing throughout 2022 on what should be a great year for our company, and generating tremendous returns for shareholders. Thanks again for your time, and if there are any other questions, please follow up with Brad Sylvester or any of us directly. Thank you.
Thank you, sir. This concludes today's conference call. We thank you all for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect your lines, and have a wonderful day.