Good day, and welcome to the Magnolia Oil & Gas second quarter 2022 earnings release and conference call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please find our 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 may press star, then one on a touchtone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Brian Corales. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Maria, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Magnolia Oil & Gas' second quarter earnings conference call. Participating on the call today are Steve Chazen, Magnolia's Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer, and Chris Stavros, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. As a reminder, today's conference call contains certain projections and other forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities l aws. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in these statements. Additional information on risk factors that could cause results to differ is available in the company's annual report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC. A full safe harbor can be found on slide two of the conference call slide presentation with the supplemental data on our website.
You can download Magnolia's second quarter 2022 earnings press release, as well as the conference call slides from the investor section of the company's website at www.magnoliaoilgas.com. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Steve Chazen.
Thank you, and good morning, and thank you for joining us today. Magnolia has just completed its fourth year as a public company. Despite the continued product volatility, our business model remains unchanged. Our ongoing confidence in the business is supported by our core values and based on our strong financial and operating results and our team's numerous accomplishments. Over the last four years, we have profitably increased our production while transitioning our Giddings asset to a full development mode. We also continue to generate significant free cash flow, allowing us to opportunistically repurchase our shares. Our business model limits the spending on drilling, completing wells at 55% of our EBITDAX, and is expected to provide mid-single digit annual production growth over time. The remaining unallocated cash flows can be used for small bolt-on oil and gas property acquisitions, share repurchases, and dividends.
So far this year, we have far exceeded our plan. We now expect our full year 2022 production to grow between 12% and 14% while investing less than 1/3 of our cash flows, with the excess cash allocated to activities that should enhance our per share value of the company. Our second quarter results set records for several financial and operating metrics, including net income, operating income margins, earnings per share, and total production volumes, which exceeded our earlier guidance. We grew company total production 14% year-over-year and 3% sequentially while spending just 31% of our EBITDAX drilling and completing wells and generating operating income margins of 68%.
Production for the quarter was 74, 2 00 bbl per day at the high end of our guidance due to better well performance in both our Karnes and Giddings assets, ongoing efficiency at Giddings, which led to more net wells and some additional non-operated activity. Our record production, which is unencumbered by hedges, combined with strong product price realizations, contributed to our record free cash flow of approximately $251 million. We repurchased a total of 4.1 million shares, reducing our total diluted shares outstanding by 8% compared to last year's second quarter. The remaining free cash flow allowed our cash balance to build to more than $500,000 at the end of the second quarter. Our balanced approach to allocating our cash flow provides consistent production growth and a steady reduction in our outstanding shares.
This combination is expected to result in double-digit annual dividend growth. As announced yesterday, we have transitioned our semi-annual base dividend to a quarterly base dividend with an initial rate of $0.10 per share on a quarterly basis. The new annualized payout of $0.40 per share represents a 43% increase to Magnolia's dividend compared to the $0.28 per share distribution associated with full year 2021. We believe that the increased dividend payment level is secure and sustainable with product prices at less than half their current level, and expect our dividend to grow annually as we continue to execute our business plan. We plan to revisit the dividend payment rate early next year based on our full year 2022 financial results, and we will recast our results from this year using a $55 oil price environment.
We continue to operate two drilling rigs across our two assets and expect to maintain this level of activity for the balance of the year. At current product prices, our capital for drilling and completing wells should be well below our 55% spending cap, resulting in significant free cash flow generation. Most of the free cash flow is expected to be allocated towards improving the per share value of the company, including our plan to repurchase at least 1% of our outstanding shares each quarter. Magnolia's investment proposition is differentiated. We believe that our moderate and consistent production growth, combined with a gradual reduction of our outstanding shares, will result in steady per share growth of the company and a growing dividend. I'll now turn the call over to Chris Stavros.
Thanks, Steve, and good morning, everyone. I will review some items from our second quarter and refer to the presentation slides found on our website. I'll also provide some additional guidance for the third quarter and remainder of the year before turning it over for questions. Beginning with slide three, which shows a summary of our second quarter, Magnolia continued to execute on our business model, as demonstrated by our very strong second quarter 2022 financial and operating results. We established quarterly records for many of our key operating and financial metrics during the quarter, including production, net income, diluted earnings per share, free cash flow, and most notably, operating income margins or EBIT of 68% during the period.
These results were supported by the absence of hedges on our production, which provided very strong product price realizations, our efforts around cost containment and supply chain management, and stronger overall production growth. We generated total adjusted net income for the quarter of $294 million and diluted earnings per share of $1.32. Our adjusted EBITDAX for the quarter was $393 million, and total capital associated with drilling completions and bringing on new wells was $122 million, or just 31% of our EBITDAX. D&C capital was somewhat higher than our earlier guidance due to the timing of our activity and more non-operated activity than we expected, which should benefit our production during the second half of the year.
Overall, company production volumes grew 3% sequentially and 14% on a year-over-year basis to 74,200 bbl of oil equivalent per day in the second quarter. Looking at the quarterly cash flow waterfall chart on slide four, we started the second quarter with $346 million of cash. Cash flow from operations before changes in working capital was $362 million during the period, with working capital changes and other small items benefiting cash by $21 million. Our D&C capital incurred, including land acquisitions, was $123 million. During the quarter, we repurchased 4.1 million Magnolia shares for $102 million and ended the quarter with $502 million of cash on the balance sheet, or about 10% of the company's equity market value.
Looking at slide five, this illustrates the progress of the reduction in our total shares outstanding since we began our repurchase program in the second half of 2019. Since that time, we've reduced our total diluted share count by nearly 47 million shares, or approximately 18%. Magnolia's weighted average fully diluted share count declined by 5 million shares sequentially, averaging 222.4 million shares during the quarter. We had 12.3 million shares remaining under our repurchase authorization at the end of the second quarter, which is specifically directed towards repurchasing shares in the open market. Turning to slide five, as Steve discussed, we have transitioned our dividend payout schedule from a semi-annual pace to a quarterly dividend schedule with an initially quarterly base rate of $0.10 per share.
This new rate represents a 43% annualized increase from our 2021 dividend rate. Our plan for annualized dividend growth of at least 10% is expected to supplement the per share growth rate of the company and is aligned with our overall strategy of achieving moderate annual production growth and reducing our outstanding shares by at least 1% per quarter. We will revisit our dividend payment rate early next year based on our 2022 results and recast that in a $55 oil price environment. Our balance sheet remains very strong, and we ended the quarter with a net cash position of more than $100 million. Our $400 million of gross debt is reflected in our senior notes, which are not now callable and do not mature until 2026.
Including our second quarter ending cash balance of $502 million and our undrawn $450 million revolving credit facility, our total liquidity is $952 million. Our condensed balance sheet and liquidity as of June 30 are shown on slides seven and eight. Turning to slide nine and looking at our per unit cash costs and operating income margins. Despite the substantial increase in product prices over the past year, we have seen only a modest increase in our total costs. Our total adjusted cash operating costs, including G&A, were $14.04 per BOE in the second quarter of 2022, an increase of $2.64 per BOE compared to year-ago levels.
Almost 2/3 of this increase was due to higher production taxes, which are directly related to the sharp increase in product prices over that period. The modest per barrel cost increase is nominal compared to the nearly $30 increase in our revenue per BOE. Including our DD&A rate of about $8.50 per BOE, which is generally in line with our F&D costs, our operating income margin for the second quarter was $48.62 per BOE, or 68% of our total revenue and more than double compared to year-ago levels. Simply put, 92% of the revenue increase was captured in our operating margins on a year-over-year basis. Turning to guidance for the second quarter or for the third quarter and the remainder of the year.
We're currently operating two drilling rigs and plan to continue at this level of activity through the end of the year and into next year. One rig will continue to drill multi-well development pads in our Giddings asset. Second rig will drill a mix of wells in both the Karnes and Giddings areas, including some appraisal wells in Giddings.
We continue to improve our operating efficiencies in the Giddings field, which should help offset some of the oil field service inflation. As we have noted previously, this will also lead to some additional net wells during the year. Given the strong well results from both of our assets, ongoing efficiencies, and improved cycle times, as well as higher non-operated activity, we are raising our expectations for our full year 2022 production growth to between 12% and 14% compared to 2021 levels. Looking at the third quarter of 2022, we expect our total production to be between 74,000 and 76,000 BOE per day, and our D&C capital is estimated to be between $105 million and $115 million.
Should product prices remain around current levels, we would expect our third quarter effective cash tax rate to be between 8%-10%. As I mentioned earlier, we remain completely unhedged for both our oil and gas production, allowing us to fully capture the benefit of current high product prices. Oil price differentials are anticipated to be a $2-$3 per barrel discount to MEH and slightly narrower than historical levels. Our fully diluted share count for the third quarter is estimated to be approximately 219 million shares, which is 7% below year-ago levels. Finally, last month, we released our 2022 sustainability report, which significantly expands on our earlier disclosures. The report provides an update on our efforts, our teams are executing to safely and responsibly develop our oil and natural gas resources.
The report can be found in the Sustainability section of our website. We're now ready to take your questions.
We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touchtone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star then two at this time. We will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Our first question comes from Neal Dingmann with Truist Securities. Please go ahead.
Morning all. Thanks for the comments, guys. Steve, my first question is just wondering how much pressure you got from your wife to boost that dividend. No, seriously, my first question, Steve, is just on something you mentioned in prepared remarks, and that is, could you speak to your view. You mentioned about adding value with the dividend, and I'm just wondering how you sort of look at the dividend versus buybacks when you think about or even versus organic or external growth, how you think about all of those in context of adding value.
Okay. We'll start with the dividend. You know, we think, we believe that the dividend is an integral part of the business, and you know, we plan to grow it at least 10% on this base dividend annually. What you'd rationally expect that in the fourth quarter, we'll pay another $0.10, and then we'll revisit the rate in the first quarter based on this year's results. It would recast to $55. What that means in a $55 environment, we would easily be able to cover the dividend. It doesn't really cut into things. The share repurchases are opportunistic. The market is, as you may have noticed, a little volatile. You know, there's always opportunity to repurchase.
We repurchased some shares during the last month during what would normally be a blackout period for us. A lot of people did that, I'm sure. Even some company I know well, other company. I think we continue to look at share reduction as an important part of it. It's really just saying that the assets we view are worth more this way than that way. You know, our total distribution to our shareholders is the sum really of the share repurchases plus the fixed dividend. You know, if you get to the point where the dividend or the shares or the share price is not reflective, that is too high, you know, we would clearly shift to a different approach.
As long as we can say, you know, this is actually pretty cheap, we'll continue to buy in shares at an accelerated rate, you know, in this kind of environment. You know, building cash is interesting, but you know, probably need to up our share reduction program. We don't know anything about what EnerVest is gonna do. As far as acquisitions go, we're sort of picky. If you buy PDPs, pure PDPs, and you pay SEC value for it, so that's the forward curve at a 10% discount rate. If you count overhead, which almost nobody does when they talk about the purchase, and taxes, because you're gonna pay tax on it, you're probably around a 6% real return.
The only way you get more is if there are locations in the package that you can drill and make returns 15%, 20%, 25%. Most of the packages that have been put up for sale are virtually entirely PDPs, and their wells, and the wells that they talk about are ones that wouldn't be competitive for our business. We need wells in the packages. I don't really like buying PDPs because I think the rebased return is too low for us. As far as drilling wells are concerned, the wells have to be competitive with basically Giddings wells. If they're not, you know, it's not something we really can do. We do a fair number.
We sort of beneath the radar of very small acquisitions, $5 million $6 million, $7 million, $8 million, $9 million, $10 million, maybe larger if we're lucky. These are mineral interests or small working interests in generally Giddings, in and around our stuff, and we'll continue looking for those. You know, there's more of them now than there's been for a while. As far as acquisitions, we need one that's clearly accretive to us in rates of return going forward and would fit into our business model and within our skill set. We don't know anything about North Dakota or the Rockies, or maybe one of us knows something about the Permian, but probably that's a little probably not something we probably would do.
You know, and these orphan areas like the Eagle Ford and Giddings, you know, are places where we can make decent money and a lot less competition for acreage and that sort of thing. You know, that's how we think about it. We view the share repurchases as a form of dividend in just a different way. You know, if it gets to the point where it doesn't work or we can't make it work, you know, we'll rethink the process. You know, right now, there seems to be plenty of volatility and plenty of opportunities to buy the shares at, you know, reasonable levels.
Now, through details, Steve, and then one thought if I could. I haven't heard you talk in a while or maybe give your suggestions on when you look now at that Giddings, you've had a lot now of successful wells. Would you say, you know, how much are you able to quantify beyond the original 70,000 acre? How much you've got sort of high confidence or in delineated already? Are you able to talk about that?
Well, you know, what we have, and you know, we just don't think of it actually the same way that, you know, somebody might think about the Permian. We look at it of how long a period, a forecast period we can forecast and actually pick the locations, and they'd be the same rough quality as the ones that we're currently drilling. You know, I think in Giddings, we have around a five-year forecast. We would have about five years running two rigs of drilling activity in Giddings with the same sort of results we're getting now. That's really my way of looking at rather than looking at acreage because, you know, I'm not really in the real estate business, at least not deliberately. You know, that's the way we look at it.
That, you know, that's a lot of locations. They may not be, you know, maybe five or six here. You know, we're gonna drill a pad in the fourth quarter in Giddings with an eight-well pad. We're starting it now. It'll go into, you know, run through the third quarter, then the fourth quarter. So it'll go on. You know, the scale of the business is growing. We're adding some infrastructure to take away some more of the costs out of the structure. You know, we can. It's gonna be a bigger business three years from now than it is today. You know, we're pretty optimistic about it.
As far as this acreage stuff, you know, it's in some ways misleading to give you a bigger number because you know, you'll divide by something, and get a number that doesn't, you know, that's probably not reflective of reality. If you think about it as, you know, five years of inventory and maybe more, but certainly five years of inventory based on what we know now on a two-rig program, that give you an idea sort of how much we've got. I think for five years, we're pretty safe, and it will continue to grow. The two rigs will continue to exceed the decline, you know, overcome the decline. What we have will grow in production every year.
You know, we're pretty safe, I think, on this, you know, mid-single digit growth. You know, again, if we could find something that another acquisition of reasonable size, reasonable being not large, size that fit into our business model and we could extend it, we would do that and then add a rig to go with it. You know, right now, we're pretty full up on what we need to do.
Thanks, Steve. Appreciate the time.
Sure.
Our next question comes from Leo Mariani with MKM Partners. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hey, guys. Was hoping to hear a little bit more about some of the progress on the step-out wells here in 2022. Really just trying to get a sense if y'all are starting to maybe kind of, you know, increase some of the sweet spots. I know you originally had this 70,000 acre sweet spot there in Giddings, but then you talked about kind of another 25,000 acres that was kinda looking, you know, more prospective that could kinda move into that sweet spot category. Just wanted to get a sense of the recent drilling results here in 2022 and some of the progress there.
You know, basically, you know, there's two things we've been working on. One is spacing. We never have really had any good idea what kind of spacing. We found the spacing for the oil-rich areas to be a little narrower than we had been drilling, you know, closer together. There's more locations. In the gassier areas, you know, about what we were doing was okay because the gas flows better. You know, we've been doing a lot of that. As far as the areas are concerned, we continue to add to inventory. You know, as I answered the last question, you know, I don't think the
It's misleading to give you an acreage number because you'll divide by something, then get a low number of locations. I think the way you should look at it is that we got two, you know, five years with two rigs running full time in Giddings. That's the inventory of the wells that look just like the ones we're currently drilling. Going on the extension program has been very successful. We continue to keep a five-year inventory of high quality wells that work in much lower oil price environment than today. You know, these wells have very short paybacks and are doing very well.
You know, some of the extensions were better than others, but all of them were economic wells.
Okay. I guess just in terms of, you know, recent well costs at Giddings, I know you guys used to throw out a number of around $6 million or so to get one of these wells down. I know there's been some inflation. Would you guys be able to to update us on kind of a rough well cost? And could you also provide a little bit more details on some of the infrastructure projects you talked about at Giddings? Is that more 2022 or kind of more, you know, some years beyond, 2023 or 2024?
Yeah. Chris?
Yeah, it's Leo, it's been running about $1,000 per lateral ft in terms of the drilling cost. Now, you know, we've picked up the length of our laterals is obviously sort of risen through the year and over the last year or two. You know, we're doing a lot more on that. I mean, follow on what you were asking before, I mean, we've picked up a lot of momentum, you know, in terms of our drilling results through operating efficiencies and other things which, you know, Steve mentioned, has added a lot of new wells. You know, the well performance or the production, you can sort of see it in the volumes that we've had through the year.
It's pretty indicative of the momentum we've picked up just in terms of some of the efficiencies. It's effectively added new wells, and so we've gotten a lot better at this. Steve referenced the eight well pad that will be coming on, you know, later in the year or late in the year. There's a lot to be said for that.
Okay. Just any details around infrastructure?
Yeah, we've added some infrastructure to maybe about spending about $20 million.
Right.
About $20 million of the capital was spent on infrastructure. We had originally planned that. I mean, you know, the deviation on both the production, frankly, and the capital is this non-op stuff because it's, you know, not predictable. We can't predict when, if they're gonna drill a well, we can't predict when, and we can't predict when they turn it on, 'cause they have their own reasons for turning it on. It's picked up materially in the back half of the year. You know, somebody woke up and said, "Oil is $100. Maybe we should drill some oil wells." That's really, you know, a lot of our inability to predict both capital and at least generally.
Now, you know, we're not short of money on the capital. You know, I view the money as very well spent, an extra $20 million of capital. It's just gonna give us more production next year. You know, production next year should be quite strong again, based on where we are now.
Okay, that's helpful. I guess maybe just on the follow up a little bit on the infrastructure. I mean, you know, is that kind of a rough number where it's, you know, relatively small, call it $20 million a year for the next couple of years? Just trying to get a sense if you look forward, do you see any more significant infrastructure needs?
No, you won't see that, I don't think. I think this was a one-time opportunity to lower our costs, basically to haul less oil by truck.
Okay. Thanks, guys.
Our next question comes from Umang Choudhary with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Thank you, and good morning.
Good morning.
Very thorough answer on creating value for the organization and on capital returns. Wanted to do a quick follow-up there. Let's envision a scenario where oil prices remain at $100 and gas prices remain above $4. In that scenario, if, like, you have a $0.10 dividend, you plan to recast it at $55 oil and $2.75 gas. If the share repurchases don't come through more than the current pace of deployment, is the plan then to build cash on the balance sheet for a future day? Or will you look to kind of make the investors whole through a one-time special dividend at the end of the year?
We expect to be able to retire the shares at a higher level than the 1%. I mean, we've actually been sort of twice that. You know, there are these noisy periods in the market, you know, the market acts sort of oddly. You know, you can buy a lot of shares. I think what's happening is, you know, somebody's selling, you know, shorting the shares and selling them to us. You know, but I don't know where they're getting the shares from. We continue to buy the shares, and we expect to continue without regard to what EnerVest does. We shouldn't have any trouble, you know, spending all the money, most of the money.
As far as a special dividend goes, you know, that's the point where we're not gonna build cash on the balance sheet. The only reason we have it up so high is an expectation that we'd be able to acquire some shares from EnerVest over time. Generally, you know, our cash balance a couple hundred million would be plenty. You know, we can survive easily in any environment. As far as the dividend is concerned, you know, we have a bias on the dividend to pay more dividends. As was pointed out by the first speaker, my wife doesn't look at the stock price.
I don't have to mark the market, but she does count the dividends. This will be a good year for her dividend program.
That's great. Awesome.
I think if you try to forecast forward to some other environment, where you can't buy the shares, you know, I don't know exactly what we would do in that environment, 'cause you'd have to. You know, the question simply is the $100 oil and $4 gas sustainable, or is it gonna be some other number? You know, I think as the story progresses, you're gonna find we're gonna find some small, I mean, $25 million, $30 million, $40 million acquisitions to build the business, you know, as we get closer to 100,000 a day in production. You know that in Giddings not off somewhere.
You know, there's a fair number of sort of family ownership out there that's been sort of sticky. You know, we may be able to do some of that to use some of the money. Generally speaking, it's just hard to forecast what you would do in a very different environment. Right now, I think reducing the share count is a valuable thing for the people who want to stay in the stock.
Makes a lot of sense. I appreciate that comment. I guess just following up on getting some spacing, can you remind us where you were before, on a spacing and where are you heading right now in the oily part of the acreage? I mean, one could argue that you probably have more than five years of inventory in the core, acknowledging that, your planning process just takes five years into account right now.
Well, you know, we have more than five years probably, for sure. Five years we can lay out. We don't pay much attention to whether it's an oil area or a gas area. We just look at. We think it's all about money. What we find is in the gas. You know, we're drilling some gassier wells and some oilier wells, and it really isn't. You know, it's almost strategy free. It's sort of, you know, how much money can we make and how easily can we deploy it into some area? You know, we may drill more gas wells, but it really isn't shifting based on product price.
It's really shifting based on, you know, what we can do quickly or, you know, what we can organize and how we can bring the land position together. I think we're right now, by sheer chance, we're sort of splitting between the oilier areas and the gassier areas, but it could shift to more oily or more gassy. Again, not necessarily driven by product price. Now, if the price of natural gas falls to $0.50 or $2, you know, we probably have a different view, but with a, you know, $4 or better number, pretty unlikely that we'll, you know, we'll pass on any gas locations. We'll continue to be active in that. The oil area also is good.
It's just a little more complicated on land, that's all.
No, that makes a lot of sense. Thank you.
Our next question comes from Austin Aucoin with Johnson Rice. Please go ahead.
Johnson Rice.
Good morning, Steve and team. Thank you for taking my questions.
Sure.
With CapEx of $122 million in the quarter and a midpoint of $110 million for the 3Q guide, going forward, should we think of about $110 million-$120 million dollar quarterly run rate guidance range?
Our ability to forecast the non-op activity is shown to be non-existent. You can use a number like that if you'd like, and you're probably just as accurate as we are. 'Cause, you know.
Right.
We just can't. It's not a lot of money, it's just a lot of noise. We've adjusted for the inflation. We don't see any more inflation than we outlined last quarter. We're drilling more net wells or participating in more net wells. We'll get more net production and, you know, production at $100 oil or $90 oil is pretty attractive. You know, you get your money back certainly in six months. You know, I don't see why we would cut back on that activity just to make some imaginary number that somebody has. We got a lot of money. You know, money is not our problem.
I appreciate the color. As a follow-up, would it still be hard to get a new rig? Last quarter, you said it would be, but the industry seems to be adding a rig every week. Has anything changed?
Well, you know, right now we would, you know, with two rigs running, if we wanted to add another rig, it might take six months to add a rig. So if you know, we don't have any plans to do that. There's no real need to do it right now. But if there were, it would take us about six months to add a rig. And you know, that's at some point in the future, we'll have to add a third rig, but you know, it's certainly not imminently.
That's all from me. Thank you for the time.
Thanks.
Our next question comes from Nicholas Pope with Seaport Research. Please go ahead.
Morning, everyone.
Morning.
You guys gave a fair amount of detail on Giddings inventory. As you kinda shift back to Karnes, how do you think about the inventory and the runway that you have in that asset right now? I mean, I know it's very blocked up with operators. Is there opportunity to expand on that side of the Eagle Ford for you guys?
No. Frankly, not a lot. You know, some operated in the, you know, more of it in the non-op area. Sometimes the wells aren't competitive with the Giddings wells. You know, we stay away from them, and the Giddings wells are basically more give better returns for us. You know, we could go into a mode for a year or so where we just relied on the non-op, and take the rig, you know, basically, you know, both rigs for a whole year in Giddings, and probably do better than fooling around going to drilling some wells in Karnes. There's always some more in Karnes. You know, it's a gift that keeps giving. So.
You know, right now, the wells simply, you know, aren't competitive with what we can do in Giddings, and we'll probably stay with that sort of plan for a while.
Would there be any interest in expanding outside of that concentrated area, or just not think it's competitive in other parts of Eagle Ford, even in nearby?
Well, you know.
The question is how do you do that? You know, there's a number of fairly large you know, stuff out there in private equity and that sort of thing out there. You know, the drilling locations, while you know, you buy the PDPs and you get bigger, I guess, but the drilling locations tend to be not competitive with how else we would spend the money in, basically in Giddings, so we wouldn't drill the locations that these promoters put out there. You know, I think it's you know, there might be some small deals, but you know, it's certainly not a focus for the company at this point because you know, it's just too expensive.
You know, you basically got to buy PDPs and, you know, I don't think you make a return of more than 7% or 8% on a PDP acquisition, which is, you know, not something that's real exciting to us. You know, we can, you know, cook the books a little bit, so generate some free cash. It looks like a lot more free cash because, you know, because we're depleting this asset. You know, as a business matter, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
Got it. I appreciate the comments. That's all I had.
Thanks.
Thank you.