All right. Greetings, and welcome to everyone. It's a delight to have all of you here, and we deeply appreciate the interest and your support, and deeply appreciate the opportunity to see you all again and shake a few hands, and talk about the progress that we have made. I just have a few points to make. The first point is, today, marks the 40th anniversary of the founding of First Matador. So we did that for 20 years, and then we started Second Matador. As you see up on the screen, that, we started with $270,000, which I thought was all the money in the world at the time. We feel we've come a long way from there. We have...
I'm looking out over the audience, I know we have Scott Walker here, whose uncle was in that original group, and a few others. It's just harder to pick you out among this crowd. When there was only 17, it was a lot easier to make introductions. I wanna thank all of you for doing that. To talk about those early days, we have some staffers that were there with us in those early days. Yvonne, where are you, Yvonne? Now, Yvonne, you're gonna have to assert your seniority and push up here close to the front. Kathy Wayne . Kathy? There you are. She doesn't like to get up in front of the crowd. We're gonna ask her to speak 200 or 300 words there. BJ, where are you?
Yeah, see, they're trying to sit close to the door so they could slip out. These are all people with more than 30 years, and what a great difference and what a great group that they are, and how special they are to our progress. We've had a lot of other people leaning on that rock and pushing on that rock to get us where we are today. We have been through a lot over these 40 years. We've been through 2 or 3 major recessions, a pandemic, 7 different presidents, and 2 wars, and the industry itself has shifted from vertical wells to horizontal wells.
A few years ago, we were drilling 98% of our wells as 1-mile laterals, today, 98% of our wells are 2-mile or more laterals, some reaching 2.5 miles, 2.7 miles. If you think about it, you know, that's going from here past BeltLine, probably up to Legacy, and you're saying in a 30-foot zone. The technology advancements have been enormous. As you'll see later on, we'll talk about the couple of horseshoe wells that we've drilled. To think about, you drill 1 mile this way, then loop around and drill another mile to get to 2 miles, and you're bending the steel, but it's not so much about bending steel, but that angle is easier. It's maintaining that mud weight, not too heavy, not too light.
Tyler Bruecher , are you here? Out here. Take your bow. Your team, Tyler Kennon, in that group? Tyler? Tyler is our favorite Canadian import. Right. It's great work by the team and led by Billy, who's drilled all over the world and is President of our operations, grew up in an oil camp in Electra, Texas, until he took a 4-year vacation, as he says, in the Marines. Got it and returned to the oil fields ever since, all over the world. These are the great teams they have put together, and we've experienced $20 oil and $120 oil, and have worked our way through those days, and each time have come out stronger because we don't stop. We just keep working that much harder.
As you can see with this group of people, they all know what's coming. David and I have been through this a number of times, and they know what to do. They just keep going on. Finally, a few years ago, when we went public, it's been just over 10 years, we were approximately 155 in size among public oil and gas companies, and today, we're in the top 15. We are now over $10 billion in assets from that $270,000. We have a $6 billion market cap. We have 463 million barrels of oil or gas equivalent. Not bad. Billy reminds me constantly that when he got to Matador, we were making 200 barrels.
I says, "Is having $463 million good enough?" Billy says, "No." He wants us to get a couple more rigs and get really busy, right? But it's been great working with him. Importantly, beginning with David when he was CFO, is that we've had 35 consecutive quarters where we've met or exceeded Bloomberg consensus guidance. Imagine that, 9 years of beating what the experts thought we were gonna do for our financial and production results. That's not to mention that we have grown our acreage position, starting from a standing start in this Matador to 150,000 acres out there in the Delaware portion of the Permian.
Our headcount, of course, Nancy and I started in a windowless office, many years ago on Meadow Road, today we have 350 employees at Matador. Last year, we had $2.9 billion in revenues and $1.3 billion in net income. I say often, that's really not bad for a company that began with friends and family, we've never relied upon or had private equity. You know, this group in here, look around, shows it can be done if you get the right people pushing on the rock. As Billy says, our President of Operations, "We're better together," I think we all agree with that, everybody has done their part.
I can look around the room, and if I had time in the old days when we were a little smaller, I used to like to go around and introduce everybody. I'm afraid if I did that, we'd have to order in lunch. Please understand that I'll conclude by simply reminding everybody, you know, in case you needed it, that we're now paying dividends. How do you like that? We started out at a nickel, went to a dime per quarter, and now we're at $0.15, so it's $0.60 a year. We believe at our October board meeting, we plan to look very seriously at raising the dividend rate again for next year, 2024, and raise it again.
Working our way up the scale, it's really a pleasure for us to be able to pass on some of this revenue growth and net income growth back to you. I see several people out there that I'd like to recognize. My good friend, handball player, Paul Flawn , Coach Randy Allen, Coach Oliver Kids, been with us, good friend. Sandy and Steve Woods, whose, you know, dad and my dad were best of friends, and Steve's been a great friend, too, and it's really fun to go across here. Phelps, Bill Phelps, where are you? There you are. I didn't wanna miss you and your wife. My two sisters, I don't wanna miss introducing them because then they'll start asking questions. Would you please raise, Adam?
There they are. Also, I wanna introduce Gregg Glasser . Greg, if you'd stand, please. Greg takes care of the friends and family group at RBC, keep standing. I wanna embarrass you good. Any of you that ever have problems with your stock or wanna buy more, Greg does a wonderful job keeping people informed on various events and has helped... I mean, it just, it's made it go very smooth, we appreciate that very much. Right. In case you think I'm getting speaking for the board and getting too generous with dividends, we have our auditors here today. Chris Daker , if you'd stand, and Kim and Derek. Derek's been here 10 years. He knows where all the bodies are.
But it's great having you, and it's always been very important to us to have auditors who take a real interest and really are thorough. I know Bill, down there, will say something, too, of how much we appreciate all of y'all's extra work. Thank you. All right. So with that, I'm gonna sit down. We do have a special guest. I don't think, David, you've stood. I think we've called your name. Would you please stand? David goes back to. I have a test when I'm hiring on whether how quickly I can get him to say yes, and the real test is whether I ask, invite him to breakfast, and then I hope that before breakfast is over, they've committed.
When I was interviewing David at breakfast, and I offered him the job, the other guy with us says, "Joe, he doesn't know why he's here." He looked at me kind of curiously. We thought it was reasonable, give him another day or so to think about it. He's here. We worked together for a long time. Great friend, great professional, now I wanna introduce two of our good friends from Amarillo, Bob Garrett and Dick Smith. Everybody, raise your hand. Dick, y'all two stand for one moment. Oh, Sam, wait a minute. All right. Okay. Would all those that have had some touching of the Terry State well, either drilling it or producing it or accounting for it, please stand. All right, there you are.
We've got a list of all shareholders that would like a well name form. Please let someone in our group have that. We're working through the list as fast as we can. The control isn't always ours. The State of New Mexico regulatory authorities like to think they're gonna have a say in it, too. It affects timing on the permit and the order, but we'll get around to it if you'll just let us know that's something you'd like to have. With that, I'd like to introduce the Board to you. These are a special group of guys that give generously of their time, more than they have to. If you'd give me the next one, Mack. All right, just running through there.
Tim is our Lead Director, and he was one of the most distinguished portfolio managers in the country. A good friend, a very thoughtful guy, a really second and third-level thinker, and we have a lot of fun, graduate MBA from University of Virginia, and we have a really good time. His mother, shows you what a nice person he is, he's taken his mother to all the national parks.
Not all yet.
They're getting there, but in that, a very thoughtful and considerate guy and a big part of our board. Also like to call out for special, Gaines Beatty. Gaines and I coached our boys in baseball. He's a C-suite recruiter, and I asked him, I said, "Hey, can I get you to come interview or see what we're doing on hiring?" He did, and you can see back there where the line goes up and up and up. Before that, before Gaines and I coached baseball together, it was kind of flat. We were going up a little bit, but when Gaines got there, he has such great insight. He's been a big help to us in getting some first-rate talent. The board would agree with that.
Next to him is Ray Baribault, Ray is one of the top 1% petroleum engineers in America. He started out at Exxon, went to Netherland and Sewell, started his own company. He understands drilling, operation, reserves, finance, is a real glue to the board. Ken Stewart. Ken's been involved since 1990 of the First Gulf War, he was the head of the global head of Norton Rose Fulbright & Jaworski. Ken, that's what, 33 years? you know, is a very able counsel, all that, organized this Matador. Bill Byerley.
Bill was the senior at PwC and head of their energy practice and did audits on both Conoco and Exxon, among other companies, and has really continued to find ways for our audit effort to improve. Then Monika Ehrman. Monika, I met, I say I met, I attended some of her CLE seminars on oil and gas, and I said, "God, she's really smart." Turns out she's a petroleum eng-- seems to know the industry. She was a petroleum engineer, then a vice president at Pioneer, and now head of the oil and gas department, legal department at SMU, and teaching oil and gas there. Her husband's also Brad, also in the oil and gas business. Continuing on, Bo Harrell .
Bo and I have had a relationship for almost twenty years, uh, been involved in different capacities. He was in marketing for a long time and really understands, so when you're in the ups and downs, he's been help-- very helpful to us. Julie Rogers, uh, uh, from Amarillo. Uh, she's also on the SMU faculty, a tenured professor, uh, electrical engineering, uh, major at University of Texas, and was the high scorer on, uh, the bar exam, as well as the, uh, making all A's in electrical engineering. Uh, that's pretty good. And, uh, conclude with our newest, uh, director that I've known for a long time. And, uh, this is my daughter, Shelly. Now, I couldn't make this up, but all through the voting procedure, she was in the lead. She was getting more votes than I was, and you know I'm competitive.
I was trying to be nice about it, and, but it was her. Last night, she was ahead of me 5, 600,000 votes, and I was pretty well accepting my fate to explain to you that she outvoted me on the deal, and the Amarillo precincts came in, and I slid by. All right. Now, and nobody does this alone, to start a company and get it to there. I owe very much, to Scott King, and, Scott King was my co-founder, here, along with my wife, Nancy.
I don't wanna step on any toes, but Scott and I were very close in getting this going, and it required a lot of different activities, and Scott was ready for all of them, and any of them, and we worked very well, and we're very fortunate today to have his widow, Maddie. Maddie, will you raise your hand? You raise up. There you are. Maddie's over there. Scott's brother-in-law, who gave one of the most moving eulogies. I really should just step down and let him see if he would restate, say his again. It was one of the most moving eulogies that I've ever heard, and it came from his brother-in-law, which is, you know, I thought, really special. Anyway, Scott was my friend, and we'd like to have a little remembrance of Scott.
He died earlier this year, in January. He was my friend, my colleague, and co-founder of Matador Two. We would not be where we are today without Scott's personal and technical skills. I liked him from the moment I met him at breakfast one morning, years ago. I made him an offer to help head up our technical effort. He accepted the offer before breakfast was over, and the rest is history. Scott had both a good heart and a good mind. He found a lot of oil in his career, and he had a very capable mindset for business, for creative endeavors, and for personal relationships. I was fortunate to have Scott as co-founder of this Matador. He could wear many hats, and he had a lot of personal and professional integrity. I really enjoyed working with Scott and getting to know Scott and his family.
As I said, above all, and in every way possible, Scott was a family man. He was a teacher to them, a scoutmaster, a music man, a potterer, a skilled woodworker, and a world traveler. He was the guy one wanted as a neighbor, as a dad, and as a boss. He led from the front. He is greatly missed, and we are deeply appreciative of his many contributions at Matador. We all felt we had the honor and pleasure of building a company with him. May he rest in peace as a good and faithful servant. I'm gonna ask David to come up here. As David finish his remarks, let's have a moment of silence for Scott at the end of David's remarks. David?
Thank you. Sue and I are delighted to be back with all of you today. Joe, thank you very much for the honor of getting to say a few words about my friend, Scott King. As I thought about what I might want to say, it sort of conjured up a lot of emotions in me. I tried to kind of distill that into maybe three things that Scott meant the most to me or that I thought represented Scott. First of all, number one is just gratitude, okay? I'm extremely grateful to Scott, to what he meant to me and what he meant to Matador. You know, Joe shows that this company started with $6 million in capital, that's how this, you know, day got to be possible, was with that $6 million.
Whose $6 million was that? Well, a big chunk of it was Joe and Nancy's, and a big chunk of it was Scott and Maddie's. They were the ones that took the risk and that had the courage to get this whole thing started. They didn't have to. They'd done really well with the sale of Matador One. They could have bought a boat and sailed off and just had a really great life, but they didn't. They decided to start something new. Joe and Scott would tell me that they wanted to build something bigger and better than they had the first time, and I think they certainly did that.
We all benefited from it, whether we were employers, shareholders, friends, whatever our relationship, all of us today benefited from the risk they took and from what Scott and Joe did in founding this company. I'm extremely grateful for that because it touched my life and Sue's life in ways I never could have imagined possible when I accepted the job here at Matador. Scott not only was the geoscientist and the head of exploration, as Joe said, Scott wore lots of hats. I mean, Scott was the IT guy. When it was time to build out new offices, Scott was managing the building construction, you know? He did so many things in the early days to kinda keep this company going, get it started, make it run, I really appreciate all that he did.
The second thing that came to my mind was just admiration. I admired him greatly as a professional. He taught me a lot about geology and geophysics and what it meant to build a prospect and that sort of thing. You know, I think Scott was a great geoscientist, and I think you can be a good geoscientist and know sedimentary systems and depositional environments, and how to find little wiggles and squiggles on the, on the seismic and what they may mean. Apologies for that technical term. You know, what really matters if you're in the oil and gas business is, can you find oil and gas as a geoscientist? Scott could do that, you know.
I remember when I first interviewed that day with Joe, him telling me, you know, that Scott was his best oil finder of all time, and that was a big reason why I wanted to come to work here at Matador, because we had a good oil finder. Over the years, we've had lots of good oil and gas finders, and that's what's made us successful. Scott, you know, as Joe said, Scott led from the front. He was the one that got all that started. I also admired Scott greatly as a person. You know, he was just a great person, a good man, a good person, a good friend, a good colleague. He was fun to be around.
You know, I always enjoyed our interactions together, personal, professional, he was just a lot of fun to be around. That probably brought me to the third, the third thing that I think about Scott. I mean, when I look at this picture, the word that just comes to my mind is joy. Scott was an incredibly joyful person. Look at that picture. Look at that smile. That's Scott. He always had that little grin on his face like that. You know, there was always a light I felt in him that, you know, not everybody possesses, but it was there, it was infectious. You couldn't help but be around it and not feel good. He had a great smile. He had a great sense of humor. Joe was right.
He was a wonderful mentor to both employees and to young people. You know, I know he was a Scoutmaster. I know that he was very involved in a program through the Society of Exploration Geophysicists called EVOLVE, which is mentoring young college students, you know, in helping them to get ready for their professional careers. We're reviewing their projects and things like that. To know Scott was to, I think, really know joy. I'm gonna end with this. One of my favorite movies of all time, even though it is Stephen King, is The Shawshank Redemption, right? I love that film. I'm sure many of you have seen that film.
One of my favorite lines in that movie, probably one of my favorite lines in any movie I've ever seen, is during one of the prison yard scenes, you have Andy talking to Red about what he would do if he ever got out of prison. Red's telling him, "This is just silly. You shouldn't spend your time, waste your time. You're never gonna get out. You shouldn't spend your time on all this frivolity." Andy looks at him and he says, "Red, you can get busy living or you can get busy dying." I'm gonna tell you, Scott King, my friend, was one of the most get busy living people I ever knew in my entire life.
Even at the very end of his life, when I would go to lunch with him, he'd tell you about, you know, what was going on with his medical condition, but he'd also tell you about what he was building, what, you know, what kind of investments he was making, where he and Maddie were going. Good Lord, they were going all over the world. I'm like, "Dude, how do you possibly have the energy to do all of this?" He did it because that's the way he lived his life. I think every day of his life, Scott King was busy living, and that's the legacy that I think he left. That's the legacy that I always think of when I think of Scott, you know?
I hope I do the same, because I really do think Scott, if he was here today, would tell us all, "You know, I'm gone, but the rest of you just ought to get busy living." Maddie, God bless you and your family, and thank you so much for sharing our beloved Scott with all of us. Thank you. Thank you, Joe.
Very nice, Dave. I think you captured the thoughts of all of Matador's staff, all the people that knew Scott and his troop, that he was a mentor to all of them, that all that stayed with him in that troop made Eagle Scout, too. You know, influencing young people, as we all know, is not that easy, but he did. Let's have just a moment of silence for Scott, in remembrance and thankfulness of a really fine man. Dear God, please bless this man and his family, know we care and take care of him, know we'll see him again sometime. Amen.
All right, now we move into the more formal part of the meeting. I will now formally call the meeting to order, say that the 2023 annual meeting of shareholders of Matador is now called to order and commences. Now, I did not call upon our newest elected member, Shelley Appel. Shelley, will you please stand? Now. All right. Shelley was salutatorian of her high school. She went to Yale undergraduate, was an honor graduate there in decision-making, which combined disciplines from course training from several different disciplines, then worked for the New York Stock Exchange in their corporate finance group, rose to be the top aide to the CFO there.
From there, she went to University of Chicago to get an MBA. She picked Chicago in part because it's very practically oriented in the numbers, she wanted to be able to do more analysis. After receiving her MBA there, she went to work for Shell in Houston, first in the M&A group and then with the CFO, then Matador kept calling. It wasn't just me. I was doing it on behalf of Matador. She came. The real point was when we got to all the ESG requirements that came out, they were new. We didn't have anyone immediately on staff to be able to do it. We entrusted it to Shelly.
Shelly did a good job. As we looked for new directors, it was becoming increasingly evident to us that ESG was here to stay and was gonna grow, we needed a director who could help us understand that. If you read the sustainability report that we had this year, she was the author, the principal author of it, has worked with our audit groups and the like to strengthen our ESG and financial response to that. We're glad to have her on the board. I just wanted you recognized. Of course, I love her. She's my daughter. I was really proud of her for getting more votes, even though I didn't really want her to win.
we'll be up again in three years, and y'all can voice your which way you wanna go. Thank you very much, Shelly. I think, Ken, don't you have to ask her if she's willing to serve? She's got to make some affirmative statement.
You bet.
Okay. Now, I'd like to introduce we have a advisory committee of shareholder members on board nominations, and these have been key shareholders for many years, and express my appreciation to them. Ken Stewart's a member of it. Monika Ehrman was a member. Craig Burkert , who's a former Director, a Harvard Business grad, and was the CFO of Ramco. Barry Banker , one of our original 17 shareholders, lives in Nashville and has been a key advisor and shareholder since 1983. He made the mistake of. We've been friends going back to 1974 or so, but he and his wife happened to be in Dallas for a wedding and made the mistake of coming to see me just as we were starting First Matador.
You get them in the backyard, you tell them, "Can't go home till they commit." He's been with us ever since. Joe Coleman, an attorney, friend, and who's been in a number of businesses, and a great businessman, head of the investment committee at Baylor University. Walter Feister . Walter's a investor from Lexington, Kentucky, long-term friend. Kevin Grevey, who was an All-American basketball player at Kentucky, but he's been scouting, and he spoke to our staff before. He and I visited a lot about what he looks for as a scout. It's very telling. It's same thing applies to the candidates and great judge of people and have been a great friend. Bob Garrett from Amarillo, that I just previously mentioned.
Bob's been a great friend, and I've really enjoyed getting to know him over these last years. Dave Lancaster is a part of it. Bobby Pickard. Bobby's my teammate in both football and baseball and started a construction company in Amarillo that's worked all over the Western United States. Bobby was one of the original 17 investors. Finally, George Yates, a man that received almost every honor there is in the oil industry, now working in Spain. We've done a lot of deals over the years, principally on a handshake. We did another one when he combined with us. We're so delighted. We've got some of his former staff here today from the office in Artesia.
It's really been nice the way it's worked out, glad to see his family, Laura and them, here, really proud of that, George, that we did that so long ago. Now I'd like to recognize some of our senior officers here at Matador, I'd like to recognize our two presidents first. Billy Goodwin, originally from Electra, Texas, worked all over the world, Van Singleton. Van got here, I love to tell the story on Van. When Van agreed to come up for an interview, it was kinda like weather that we've had the recent few days, not sure when planes would fly. Van left down there in South Texas about 2:00 A.M., so he could be sure to be here on time.
That kind of drive, as you continue to see today. Our other EVPs, Craig, I first like Craig Adams. Now, I don't want you to think you have to be from Amarillo to work here, but Craig is also from Amarillo. His dad was mayor there, and is a great lawyer, but a great friend in other ways, too. Bryan Willey. Brian's been here. He's helped out as a lawyer and as the head of Midstream, and also as now the Chief Financial Officer. Continuing on, Greg Krug. Greg, where are you? There you are. Okay. Greg, the story, and I'm sorry for taking this extra time, but I think it's important to know that we didn't really have a midstream until we went public.
As we were going public, we were getting everywhere we went, we were getting questions on how we were getting our gas out of the Eagle Ford. We weren't having any troubles at that time, but the fact of virtually every single meeting we were in, people were raising that issue, told us that while we may not have an issue, others were having it, and we better get ready. One night at dinner, you know, we asked among ourselves, Dave will remember this, with Matt: "Well, what are we gonna do if we have a problem?" Someone said, "Get Greg. Get Greg to come back." Greg said he'd come back if we promised to build a midstream. That was just to solve an emergency.
Flash forward 10 years, we've got a midstream system that stretches for 500 miles in the Delaware and is worth somewhere approaching $2 billion. You know, started out with a guy who grew up in Hooker or near Hooker, in the gas camp. We got Billy over here from the oil camp, and we got Greg over here from the gas camp. If any of y'all grew up in a water camp, we'd take that too. Okay, I'm just trying to look around. What other EVPs am I missing here? Who? Rob MacAskie . Yeah, Rob and Chris, you both might as well stand up together. We're not let y'all get away. Tom, those 3 wise men, Ned. See, you see what my problem is.
These guys, you know, they're modest, and they're trying not to be. You look here, this is the brain trust, biggest part of the brain trust that we have. You know, Michael has worked with me over 20 years, since going back to high school. Ned has built, I think, one of the finest geoscience staffs in the country, if not the best. Glenn, He came in, and it's what? He just said, "Whatever I can do to help," and we tested him. David and I both had him doing different things. I remember the day when David said he thought he was the most talented production engineer that he had ever known. Do you remember that?
Then Chris Calvert came in from Chesapeake and has taken over our completion, along with Clif Humphreys , and what a job that they've done. Fracking is a key part of drilling these wells and having million barrel recoveries. Rob MacAskie is I think one of the best, if not the best, chief accounting officers in the business, and it plays such a vital role in what we do, because, again, back to the audit committee, show of hands, if you think he's first rate or... Okay. All right. Don't let it go to your head, Rob. Then Tom Elsener and I've been friends for a long time.
Tom Elsener came over and has come up with, year after year, great drilling programs where you drill million-barrel well after a million-barrel well, that has, you know, given us a much higher rate of return than most. You really see the guys that... Everybody's taking on this responsibility. I'm boring the directors a little bit because every day we get to see how good these guys are. Reynald Baribault, why don't you say something real quick since you're kinda watching, do a lot of the operations?
This is a team that's been together for so long that they pull us well, they work together well. They're a family of themselves. I started ExxonMobil in 1985 in a downcycle, I was the beneficiary of quite a few of the older talent at ExxonMobil that still stuck around. That same level of integrity and interest in the younger professionals exists here at our company. Passing on the baton to the next generation is always on the forefront of everyone's minds. This team at Matador rivals the team that I work with at ExxonMobil all day long. With that said, hats off to you guys.
Wait, wait, before you sit down, I want to recognize Brian Erman, too, as part of that group. Again, Bryan is somebody, we have a long history back there, all these guys pitch in, and it's really a team effort. While they're standing, to give you a flavor of the core of Matador, would all the senior VPs please stand? All right. I think I have more EVPs and SVPs than we had investors in first Matador. That, they are the same thing. You can go around the room with these guys. What a terrific job all of them are doing. Now all of our VPs, please stand. This is a group, and again, we invite you to visit with them, when you come back or whatever we can do.
You see, these are people who are very committed to building a better company and to focus really on quality and not just numbers. That commitment goes through that when you have a freeze like Uri, these guys are up here making sure their computers are working, everything's still progressing, things are happening in the field, and the dedication on before as we were buying Advance, we'll get to these guys were up here working all night and did an unbelievable job, and I can't really put into words just how good it was, Kirsten and the production people keeping those wells going during that time. Very much appreciated, and I hope all of you will give them a rousing round of applause. I wish I had time to tell a story on everyone.
We may begin a rotation sometime because there are lots of good stories, this group, as you can imagine. Now I'd like to ask all the other Matador employees to stand. Many of them have 5, 10, 20 years, as I pointed out, some that had 30 years. All right, y'all please stand. All right. You know, this is the future, of course, I have a daughter that helps in often in coordination, but also I'm gonna recognize Jack Kancher and verse him a little bit. His grandfather was my football and baseball coach, Bobby Pickard, I learned so much from him. He was a big influence on my life, I told Jack when he started here, I was gonna treat him just like Coach Kerncher treated me.
We're glad that we're still joining forces after all for 50 years now. Okay, Chris Stakem and Derek are independent, registered public accountants for the year ending December 31, 2023, and your members of your team, are they here? Please stand. Shareholders, I want you to see who's checking on this, and they've done a great job, always helping us improve, and we appreciate very much. Kim, do you want to say something about this team?
I'd like to say, our best gas station.
All right. While I'm getting around the room, I'd also like to recognize my wife and co-founder, Nancy. Nancy, would you please stand? Nancy, stay standing, and then our daughter, Mary. Mary, will you please stand? I wanna get the whole family in. Yes. Now, I'm gonna introduce a few other people. Please hold your applause in the interest of time. Ed Doherty , are you here, registered? There you are. Okay. Ed's been a long-time shareholder, and he was in the business. Dale Gillette. Dale, are you signed up? The Harveys have been our shareholders, our original shareholders, back to 83. Webb, I know I saw you, so there you are. Okay, Paul, stand. Don't be shy. All right. Oh, okay.
You were behind Chris there, and I couldn't see, we have the Harveys here, and their dad was one of our first shareholders with Paul, and what a great gentleman he was. Paul's also noted because Glenn Stetson's wife worked for Paul. We appreciate the talent scouting, too. We try to find people from everywhere. Again, it's just fantastic, the relationships. Bruce and Carol Keplinger. Where did Bruce go? We still appreciate it. Donna Lazari. Donna? Still there you are. Please stand. Donna and her husband, Craig, have been two very, very special shareholders, he was just a genius at problem-solving, did so many interesting things. Texas Eastern Transmission Corporation , pipelines in Argentina, getting ships, big ships, moved around South America.
I mean, just so many different interesting things, Donna may win the prize for coming the longest distance. Has anybody been further away than New Hope, Pennsylvania? Donna, you will receive a prize in the mail. Brad Lummis. Brad? Where are you? There you are. Please stand, and your friend, Phil Hartigan. Brad was one of my favorite students when I taught accounting at SMU, still been an important part of our fabric, over 25 years. We also play, I guess, bar league basketball down there in Austin. It turns out his wife and Nancy knew each other. It shows you always have to behave, because you never know who you're gonna run into. Richard Neely . Richard and William, that's my nephew by marriage, Nancy's brother.
Richard's been a good friend and, a help to both Nancy and me, and we're delighted to have both of you here. William's been married how long?
Three years.
Okay. Don't want you to think that he's new at that. All right. I introduced my two sisters, Rhonda and Donna . Well, you can stand. Right. I'd like to end by recognizing Mac Schmitz and Amanda Crawford. Amanda? There you are, back there, and Mack, back over here. They're the real architects of this meeting. You know, y'all all know Amanda and what a fantastic Chief of Staff she is, and that's what we call her, the Chief, around there. Okay. I'd like, before moving on, just to say to everybody in here, if you're not receiving our quarterly shareholder letter, but would like to, please let Amanda know there in the back, and we'll add you to the address list. Now I need to read some formal comments.
This meeting is being held today pursuant to the notice that we mailed each shareholder of record as of April 12, 2023, which is the record date for this meeting. The secretary has made available a complete list of shareholders of the company entitled to vote at this meeting, alphabetically arranged and certified as of the close of business on the record date. Further, the secretary has provided the notice, proxy statement and proxy, and an affidavit that such notice, proxy statement, together with the 2022 annual report of the company, were mailed to the shareholders of record as of the record date. These documents will be filed with the minutes of this meeting. Will Cal Curtin please rise? Cal, we propose to appoint you as the Inspector of Elections at this meeting.
As Inspector of Elections, you will ascertain the number of shares of common stock outstanding and the voting power of each, determine the shares of the common stock represented at the meeting and the validity of proxies and ballots, count all votes and ballots and certify and declare your determination of the number of shares of common stock represented at this meeting in your count of all votes and ballots. All holders of common stock at close of business on the record date are entitled to vote, either in person or by proxy. Will you accept these duties?
Yes, sir.
All right. Cal, please present the attendance report.
As Inspector of Elections, I report that there are present at this meeting, in person or represented by proxy, the holders of approximately 109,784,548 shares of common stock of the company, out of a total of 119,183,914 shares of common stock outstanding and entitled to vote as of the record date. The holders of approximately 92% of the aggregate outstanding shares of common stock entitled to vote are present in person or by proxy. Each share of common stock outstanding on the record date is entitled to one vote.
All right. On the basis of the report of the Inspector of Elections, I declare a quorum is present for the purpose of conducting business, and the meeting is legally convened and ready to transact business. A certified report of the Inspector of Elections will be attached as an exhibit to the minutes of this meeting. As stated in the notice of the meeting, three matters will be considered and acted upon this morning. To expedite the actions to be taken, all matters of business as reflected in the notice will be presented first, and then a ballot will be taken afterwards for each voting matter. These three orders are, first, the election of four directors to our board. Two, the approval of a non-binding advisory vote to approve the 2022 compensation program of our named executive officers, also known as Say on Pay.
3, the ratification of the appointment of KPMG LLP as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for the year ending December 31, 2023. Speaking on behalf of the entire board of directors, we t hat you vote for the election of the director nominees and for the additional two proposals being considered at today's meeting. I would now like to ask Ken Stewart , the Chair of our Nominating Committee, to introduce the director nominees.
Thank you, Joe. As I think our shareholders know, our board is divided into three classes, each with staggered three-year terms. At this meeting, it's the end of the three-year term for our Class Three directors. We'll be nominating three directors to fill those positions, and then we are also going to add a Class Two director. The three nominees for the Class Three directors, we are recommending the Nominating Committee, the Shareholder Advisory Board, and the board have unanimously recommended that we reelect Joe, Tim, and Ray to their positions as Class Three directors. For the Class Two director, all that group has unanimously recommended that Shelley Appel be a nominee for that position. As a little background on the directors.
As you all know, Joe founded Matador Resources Company in 2003 and has been its Chairman and CEO since inception, as well as the Chair of the Board Executive Committee. Joe began his career as an oil and gas independent in 1983, as he's stated before, he and his wife founded Foran Oil Company with that $270 thousand from the Magic Seventeen. It's been progress forward every day and every year since then. Today, Matador is one of the top 20 public exploration and production companies in the country by market capitalization and one of the top 10 oil and natural gas producers in New Mexico.
As the founder, chairman, chief executive officer, forever leader of Matador Resources Company, Joe provides the board with leadership and industry experience, and long relationships with this group of people and others that are shareholders of this company that couldn't be replicated in any other way. Ray Baribault was elected to the board in 2014 and is Chair of the board's Operating and Engineering Committee and its Prospect Committee. As you heard Joe indicate some of his background, he served as Lead Independent Director for the board from 2016 to 2019, and co-founded, a number of energy companies and has operated those after his careers at both Exxon and Netherland, Sewell . His background, in oil and gas, and particularly operations and engineering, have been indispensable to the board and the company.
Tim Parker was appointed to the board in 2018 and is the independent director and chair of the board's Capital Markets and Finance Committees. Tim serves as a contractor in charge of research for Broad-Port Wealth Management, and that is after his long career with T. Rowe Price. He retired in 2017, and he had managed several of their funds, as well as being their chief analyst for natural resources. He brings invaluable insights from and to the institutional investor community that we have as shareholders, and has done an excellent job in guiding the board as the independent lead director. Joe stole my thunder about Shellie.
I was gonna talk on for hours of her background. I will just say as director and as a Chair of the Nominating Committee, when I saw her educational background, Yale and Chicago Business School, her business background in terms of the New York Stock Exchange and Shell, her work, and witnessed her work directly in our environmental, social, and governance area, and the reports she's put out, I have absolutely no doubt she'd make an excellent director, and I really look forward to working with her. Yes, Joe, we have already confirmed that if elected, she'll serve. That's our group, and we recommend, as Joe said, that you vote for all of these nominees. With that, I think I'm gonna turn it over to Gaines for the next next proposal.
Good morning. The second order of business is the non-binding advisory vote to approve the 2022 compensation plan for our named executive officers, excuse me, which is Say on Pay. Our comp plan is designed to reward both in the short and long term, the performance that contributes to the organization's success and the implementation of business strategies, the maintenance of our culture and values, and the achievement of our objectives. We believe that the 2022 compensation plan does accomplish these objectives. More information about the comp plan is available in the proxy statement, if you wanna look more about that. The board has recommended that you vote for the non-binding resolution approving the 2022 compensation of our named executive officers.
I'd like to introduce Bill Byerly, Chair of our Audit Committee, who will discuss the final order of business. Bill?
Thank you, Gaines. Good morning. The final proposal before us today is the ratification of the appointment of KPMG as the company's independent registered public accounting firm. KPMG served as Matador's independent registered public accounting firm for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2022, and has served as the company's auditor since 2014. The Audit Committee has appointed KPMG as Matador's independent registered public accounting firm for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2023. The Board of Directors has directed such appointment to be submitted to our shareholders for ratification at this meeting. Further information about the services provided by KPMG is set forth in the proxy statement. The Board recommends you vote for the ratification of KPMG as the independent registered public accounting firm for the year ending December 31, 2023.
I'll now turn the meeting back to Mr. Foran. Thank you.
All right. Thank you, Bill. On behalf of everyone and on the board and the Matador staff, we thank you for the rigor and expertise that you bring to the audit committee. Kenny Gaines, we greatly appreciate all your hard work and expertise in your board and committee assignments as well. To review, the 3 orders of business are the election of 4 directors, the non-binding advisory note to approve the 2022 compensation program of our named executive officers, also known as Say-on-Pay, and the ratification of the appointment of KPMG LLP as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for the year ending December 31, 2023. We will now distribute ballots to any shareholders present who wish to vote in person. To avoid confusion in counting the votes, the ballot should be cast at this time only if you have not previously given a proxy.
Are there anybody wanting to vote in person? Seeing none, is that collecting the ballots? Cale, do you have a report on the vote?
I'm pleased to report that each of the nominees for director has been elected to the board, as each nominee has received a majority of the votes cast by the shareholders present in person or represented by proxy, that are present at this meeting and entitled to vote in the election of directors.
Can you indicate when you get to the Say on Pay and the audit, how many votes that they received, the proportion of votes?
Yes, sir.
Please.
I can give those numbers. We won't have the final number until our 8-K comes out a little bit later, but I can give what we've got.
Okay.
Yes, sir.
That sounds good.
I'm pleased to report, additionally, that each of the other proposals, the non-binding resolution, approving the 2022 compensation of our named executive officers, has been approved by approximately 97% of the votes represented here, or by proxy, and that the ratification of the appointment of KPMG LLP as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for the year ending December 31, 2023, has received a favorable vote of the majority of the shares present in person or represented by proxy, over 99%.
All right.
With those results, we can say that each of the director nominees and the proposals voted upon today, as described in the proxy statement, has, consistent with the recommendations of the board of directors, been approved by the shareholders and will be recorded as such in the minutes of this meeting. We'd like to remind our shareholders and all the other stakeholders here today that specific information regarding the number of votes cast for and against each proposal will be included in our current report on Form 8-K. They will be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission in the days following.
Thank you, Cale. This completes the schedule items business to be conducted at this meeting. I wanna recognize George Jones, one of our long-term, multiple, 20 years, 25 years shareholder, and sitting next to him is Jason Schuchmache r, who has rendered exceptional service on our midstream matters, and delighted to have you here today. All right. There being no further business before the meeting, the formal portion of the 2023 annual meeting is now adjourned. I have, again, just a few remarks that if Mack will set them up, I'll get through this quickly. There have been many questions about the advanced purchase and what does it really do for Matador. I'm trying to give you an idea. With the addition of very few employees, we'll be able to handle it essentially with our current staff.
We have increased the reserves on here from 357 million barrels of oil or gas equivalent by over 100 million, 106, which gives us the 453 million barrels of oil or gas equivalent. You can see it, its impact, and this is really great rock. We can go to the next one. You'll see our acreage is in red. Advances in blue, and you see how it all fits together. It's the adjoining ranch, so to speak, and all of this is just A-plus rock. That's what we've done as a company, have focused in on trying to limit our drilling only to those A-plus locations.
That isn't just the rock that needs to be A-plus, but you can make an A location or A-minus into an A-plus by lowering the cost, eliminating the casing string. Billy, why don't you comment on what you do to make them A-plus?
Joe, I think, you know, we talked about all the people here in the room and talked about our A-plus people, those people out in the field, too, making this acquisition, our superintendents and their leadership, and all the people out there working 24 hours a day, this was a big deal. It was hundreds of wells and operations going on 24 hours a day, and they got after it, you know, boots on the ground there, making things happen and made sure that all the production kept going, and every barrel was counted and, you know, so that all that counted up for the shareholders and, really proud of them in keeping everything going, Joe.
Billy, how many drilling records has your team set currently?
We're up, we're up to 300 now, Joe. Lots of records and, you know, more to come, and we appreciate having the boardroom for the MAXCOM room there. Have our 24-hour-a-day monitoring there, and they stay after it, stay on top of things, and like I say, you know, every barrel counts, and we're drilling these 10,000, you know, foot, 2-mile laterals and, you know, they keep us in zone and keep us in the preferred target zone. Every extra barrel we get, you know, that's an extra $70, and you multiply that times 10,000 feet, that's a lot of dollars. You get 5 or 10 extra barrels, that really adds up and taking advantage of this A-plus rock.
You know, I've always thought, working all around the world, like you mentioned earlier, that the Delaware Basin is the best, and what I like about it is all the stack pay zones out there. Ned and his group, and working with reservoir and asset teams, they keep identifying more and more rock and more and more pay zones, and just makes it more and more valuable. Really appreciate all their work and, like I say, working with all those people out in the field, getting it done.
Well, to give you an idea that this MAXCOM room, it was supposed to be our boardroom, and it's turned into a 24/7, where they're watching the wells being drilled in real time. To give you an idea, they've moved the time you stay in zone. You gotta be in zone to get oil out of it. If you move out of zone, then you're not getting anything. Well, they've moved to increase the time, as you drill these long laterals, of staying in zone from 85% to over 95%, in some cases as much as staying in zone 99%. Well, if you increase the recovery by 10% on a million-barrel well, that's 100,000 barrels. It adds up to real money. An extra 100,000 barrels at $70 is $7 million.
you really have a very important facts, and it's the same thing in the measurement room that Anton or Rick Alexander here can tell you, that we're discovering, we're trusting but verifying the production, and we found 5,000 barrels, 7,000 barrels, and of course, this is real money that goes to the bottom line. they go, as I said, all night, and it's just a lot of extra effort. Billy, we appreciate you and your operations, and Greg, the marketing group, to get it right.
Now, keeping things very simple, the arithmetic very simple for everybody, we began the year, you may get tired of me saying this, but emphasizing, we began the year making 100,000 barrels of oil a day, and that had been a long time ago, get to 100. When we got to 100, and it's actually 101,000 barrels a day, we closed on the Advance deal. Now we are producing about 130,000 barrels a day. We will finish the year at 140,000, a 40% growth. You can see why we're so excited by the transaction. Without adding people, we're increasing the production 40%.
You know, price is staying this, it's going to be another banner year, but even more exciting, 2024 is pretty much in the bucket. We will have 21 wells that have been drilled but not completed, and another 28 that Tom has scheduled for us to drill. 48 wells coming on beginning first of the year to continue the momentum through 2024, and our aim is to continue on the path to 200,000 barrels and onto a path of $100 a share. Next, I just wanted you saw this briefly before of how well the properties fit, and then the pipelines that we have going through our acreage and connecting the San Mateo line with the Pronto system, giving us the 500 miles of three stream: water, gas, and oil. Next.
Probably what you've been waiting, this is maybe the sexiest thing we'll talk about today, is you can drill 4 1-mile horizontals, or you can drill 2 of the horseshoe wells. The horseshoe wells are savings up to $10 million by drilling those instead of the 4 traditional horizontals that are just straight line. This has been a big development. We're not through. We're testing it, and to see how well it works, but just the fact we've been able to make the turn is important, and we await completion. Billy, you wanna add anything?
Well, I'd say that, you know, we teamed up with Patterson-UTI to customize some rigs to take out to the Delaware Basin with high torque, top drive, walking rigs, and also set them up for managed pressure drilling and, you know, kept up with technology, leading technology out here. We showed up out here with all the high tech equipment and rigs, and now you look around, and you see them all over the horizon there. You know, everyone else figured out it's the right thing to do, and cutting days off these wells, I mean, every day we cut off $100,000 ±. it's a big deal, and moving this direction into the, you know, the horseshoe wells, that's another big step for us.
Having that technology out there to take advantage of it has definitely worked in our favor and all of our A-plus hands. As we move forward with this, there's like 80, you know, single-mile wells that are just kinda sitting there, you know, not as economic, and we'll be able to drill those. They've already been identified and looking at permitting and all, and we'll only have to drill 40 wells to get them. You know, just growing up as a kid, having, you know, a milkshake, I always wanted to get all that milkshake out of there. I twist that straw around in there, all the corners. I wasn't leaving any. That's kinda what we're doing here.
We're gonna twist it around to get it. For every two of them we do, then the next one's free. Savings on top of it.
Well, you know, what can I say? How about that? Put it in monetary terms, you drill these 40 wells, and you save $10 million for each horseshoe, that's $400 million. It can have a big impact on our stock if we can complete this innovation. Next. Here, trying to give you a feel that when we bought Advance and bought it for $1.6 billion, we did not use financing for everything. We had $600 million in the bank, in cash at the time, and we told people we will pay it down, just like we had done previously.
This is, although this is the past history of showing what we did on the RBL, which is a reserve-based lending with the banks, we paid it down, so we were in position to do the advance with cash in the bank, and we expect to do the same thing as we did before. You don't have to worry about, will it work? Will we really be able to pay down the debt? We already have. We've only owned it for two months, but we've already made a significant, what I think is a significant reduction in the debt, of over $100 million. If prices stay up there, it'll have this kind of behavior, and then when we get to October, we can see what we can do on the dividend. Next.
Give you an idea, we put a lot of emphasis on recruiting, at getting the best and the brightest, and we recruit from a number of different schools: A&M, Texas, Colorado School of Mines, University of Oklahoma, Texas Tech, University of Wyoming. We're really pleased with the caliber of hires that we've made over the last 10 years in these recent classes. You can see it's beginning to pay off in our 2022 intern class. We made 11 offers, 10 accepted. 2023, we have 14 interns, and they're off to a good start. I make the point with all of our officers, vice presidents and treasurer and everything else, that there are probably football coaches that know their X's and O's as good or better than Nick Saban at Alabama, but nobody recruits better.
You know, year after year, he's getting the best players. Where we're trying to be selective like that, the bigger companies, they, you know, they've gotta just hire for the masses, and they'll go in and make 50 offers at each school. We try to be very select and in improving the recruiting. This is something that Gaines and I felt going back, changing things in the early nineties to build the Matador that we have today. All right. Next, I'd like to introduce Tim Parker. Tim is our lead director and does an extraordinary job, and it's such an honor and pleasure to work with him. He retired in 2017 from T.
Rowe Price, he had joined them in 2001 as an equity analyst, from 2010-2013, he managed the New Era Fund and managed the energy and natural resource portions of T. Rowe Price's small cap value, small cap stock, and New Horizon funds from 2013-2017. Prior to joining T. Rowe Price, Tim was an investment banking analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co. Incorporated . He holds a Bachelor of Science from the University of Virginia and a Master of Business Administration degree from Darden School of Graduate Business at the University of Virginia. His experience with large institutional shareholder, his extensive familiarity with the capital markets, and his knowledge of Matador from inception to present, provide the company with a unique and valuable insight. Tim?
Thank you. Thank you for that kind introduction. I just wanna say, this is a great board. I love working with them, that's what I'm gonna talk about. This is a, what I think is a very functional board, that we have different strengths, different backgrounds. That's why we have different committees, we chair different committees, we all serve on different committees as well. Nothing passes until we all, as a board, talk about it, socialize it, debate it, pressure test it. That's really what we're trying to do as a board. We're here to be the guide rails for all these good people that are really doing everything today, the brain trust, as Joe calls it.
We wanna be those guide rails to keep them on track, to pressure test, to be the sounding boards, be the people that can, you know, offer new ideas from our backgrounds. If we can do that, we're doing what we can to keep this moving in the right direction. Like all of you, we're pushing on the rock, too, in the way we can. So I'm really appreciative to have a chance to serve on this board, and I'm really appreciative that you elected all of us, because I think the world of all of my colleagues on the board. That we all have, whether it's Ray's engineering and his private company experience, Bill auditing the books of ExxonMobil. You know, it's amazing to have people with these sorts of experiences serving for the betterment of this company.
I just wanna say thank you for your confidence in all of us, that, you know, we're not the rubber stamp board. We're always gonna pressure test ideas. We're not gonna let Joe run all over us. He generally has good ideas, and so does the rest of the team. Thank you again for your confidence in us, and with that, I'll turn it back over.
All right, Ray. All right, Ray. I'd like to have Ray speak and Ray, you know, came from Exxon. He helped co-found NP Resources, which also operated in the Williston Basin and served as its EVP of engineering, helping to oversee the sale of its assets in late 2021. He serves as president and chief executive officer of IPR Energy , a Plano, Texas-based oil and gas natural production operator with current operations in the Fort Worth Basin. He previously served as vice president, supervisor, and petroleum engineering consultant with the Netherland, Sewell & Associates. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in Petroleum Engineering from LSU and is a licensed Professional Engineer in the state of Texas.
He provides valuable insight to our board on drilling, completions, reservoir engineering operations, as well as growth strategies, midstream operations, and administration. Ray is just a man, not only with many professional attributes, but also extraordinary common sense. Ray?
Thanks, Joe. Appreciate the kind intro. Just one more college to add, LSU, we're adding that to the recruiting program. Hats off to the team that's managing that. A lot of man-hours involved and a lot of sweat equity for the betterment of the company moving forward. Thank you for taking the time to attend today and to listen in also on the webcast. On behalf of all of the directors here, we appreciate the Matador shareholder family, and also your continued interest and support in the company, and in the talented employees, both in Dallas and Carlsbad, and dedicated field staff keeping operations safely moving forward every day.
A common theme at Matador resonates with all its employees, from the seasoned veterans that you've all met here today, to the new recruits, new to the company. That common theme, the day's challenges and obstacles encountered along the way, are handled as opportunities for improving profitability, increasing efficiencies, and optimizing returns on investments. I'd like to shine a light on several examples here with a few slides that reflects this work ethic that carries through all ranks of the company. First slide, first off, is focusing on the operational integration of Advance Energy acquisition. Happy to report the integration is in play and is moving forward in good order, and things are rolling right along as expected since the closing in April.
As Joe noted, a few moments earlier, this strategic and accretive acquisition increases the company's proved reserves 30%. It also boosts the Ranger area drilling locations in Lee County. The acquisition included 128 producers and 2 solar disposal wells, along with the associated production facilities, and all those facilities and wells are now assimilated under Matador's daily surveillance. Drilling continues to the right, with over 100,000 feet of new rock drilled, and 300 frack stages completed using SimulFrac methods since the April closing. This slide specifically shows Halliburton's equipment on a SimulFrac spread, on a 5-well pad on the Margarita Project. Once completion operations are finished on the 21 Margarita wells, initial production will follow later this summer.
You know, the production contributed from this project and other pads that are in the queue on the advanced acreage, will benefit also from Matador's Pronto Midstream system and the Marlan Gas Plant that was acquired last year. Moving on to the favorite slide of the day. Can't let this one go for another couple of comments. You know, this slide, I'd like to bring visibility to what we call a next generation acreage development tool that Matador is an early mover on in the Delaware Basin. There are a couple of other operators that have attempted this, heretofore with not great results. The drilling and completion, the drilling has been completed on 2 wells in the JJ Wheat lease in the Wolf Area.
Those two wells are part of a nine-well drilling program. Three of those wells are yet to be drilled, and once all nine are completed and stimulated, we'll be able to see results from the horseshoe wells here today. A little bit of the getting in the weeds. In certain areas of the company's acreage, the land team, for various reasons, cannot combine two one-mile sections into a 1,280 acre spacing unit that allows a 1,280 acre, 2-mile lateral to be drilled.
There are about 40 of these wells, as Billy and Joe mentioned, that the team has identified across all the asset areas in the Delaware Basin, to take advantage of this new technique and this new technology, to, as Billy said, "Get all the milk out of the milkshake." It's a novel approach. It's a next-generation plan, and it affords quite a lot of new development ideas for areas of the company's acreage, where what do we do with a 1-mile stranded section? Looking forward to the results, coming up later this summer.
One of the rigs that is in this 9-well program at Wolf is going to move on to the Buzzard's Roost Pad, and that will be a 4-well, 2.7-mile lateral length program that will commence drilling here in the next few weeks. Another major milestone for the company, just inching forward and moving from 2-mile lateral to 2.5-mile lateral, now 2.7 mile, and ultimately, sometime in the next year or so, 3-mile laterals will be part of the development plan. If you'd like to take a deeper look into the horseshoe design itself, visit with Matador staff that's manning the drilling table outside the meeting hall area. They'd happy to.
be happy to discuss it with you, and they can run a 3-D video rendering of the drilling and prosecution of the well itself. The next slide provides an update on the company's continued successful rollout of SimulFrac operations. In this instance, in this slide, we're showing a highly profitable Rodney Robinson, 1,280 acre unit. That was a key part of the 2019 BLM leasing program. You're looking at a pad, at the two pads that are developing the north end of the 1,280 acre standup unit.
This, this challenge that Matador faced here in this drilling campaign was to complete stimulation operations on 8 newly drilled wells in the Bone Spring Carbonate and Wolfcamp B targets, in as quick and efficient manner to minimize the required shut-in time to frack protect the other 17 existing producers in the unit that were completed back in 2020 through 2022. This was strategically planned out and prosecuted and conducted using remote SimulFrac operations with 2 separate frac crews consecutively. Halliburton's frac spread is what you're looking at here on the north end of the unit pad. The horsepower and equipment is on the northwest pad, and then in the distance, off to the north and east, and the left right-hand side of the slide is the remote pad.
The right of way that I'm showing in the dark red line is the 7-inch steel line that is laid between the two pads. Through that 7-inch steel line, it's the conduit for the frac load that's being pumped from the horsepower equipment over, not only on the 4 wells on the near pad, but the 4 wells on the far pad that are being remotely Simul-Frac'd. Through that steel line, the average pumping rate is about 60,000 barrels of fluid and about 3 million pounds of frac sand per day. On the peak pumping day for this remote simul-frac operation, with Halliburton again on the north side of the unit and Patterson-UTI on the south pad. The combined 2-day...
The combined one-day peak rate, the company stimulated a total of over 6,300 feet of horizontal lateral, again in one day. deployed 15 million pounds of proppant and 300,000 barrels of fluid, again, all in one 24-hour period. I want to bring that out because that's day in and day out. This is SOP, standard operating procedure. It's an immense planning program, and it's replicated day in and day out with the talented team that you see here today and also in the field. With this operation, you can see the notes there, remotely simul-fracking rather than sequentially fracking one after another, using the Zipper Frac technique.
The company saved two and a half million dollars, and more importantly, minimized the amount of shut-in time for the other 17 wells on the Rodney Robinson spacing unit by 17 days. It's a huge impact, and it underscores just every nuance of every operation that the teams go through in planning and maximizing what the return on investment can be for a project like this. Hats off to everyone that's involved. In 2023, on that bottom right-hand call-out box, you see Matador will be conducting over half of its well completions with simul-frac operations. It really is a key added component to executing in the field, and it's generating substantial savings and optimizing returns on the capital programs.
The next companion slide, building off on this importance and significance of remote SimulFrac as well as SimulFrac. In 2023, the remote fracking process that I just described on the Rodney Robinson unit is estimated to double the amount of available well inventory that will be simul-frac'd with the company. It's an excellent example of how staff is continuing looking ahead around the corner for new ways to enhance operations by reducing costs. For more background on the Rodney Robinson remote SimulFracs, the staff manning the completions table can describe that in more detail, and they have a 3D drone video that they can roll for you, that rolls you through that operation, that slide presented.
Lastly, on my last slide here, shout out to the MAXCOM Operations Center. You know, this highlights some of the many successes that have been achieved to date. We're showing 215 records that the team at MAXCOM has been a part of in the five years that it's now been in operation at the company. The dedicated engineers and geologists are manning it 24/7. They work seven-day shifts, seven days on, seven days off, a night crew, a day crew. Certainly is providing very important horizontal steering guidance to the drillers on the rigs. The collective geosteering, drilling, planning, and monitoring efforts that the teams have been involved with in the five years have generated over $30 million in savings.
As we said, led to well, over 200 drilling records, and that number grows every month. No one's ready to just rest on their laurels and just look at past performance and say, "That's good enough." Every day, everyone is agents for positive change not only in this room, but in the entire company. The success of the MAXCOM operations center served as a catalyst for the kickoff in 2019 of the midstream team's 24-hour manned measurement and commodity or control room. Those team members monitor over 5,000 devices that are covering measurement, communication, instrumentation, and gas control in the field. Quite a lot to cover, but it's an important parameter to minimize downtime and improve performance of the company.
In wrapping up, Matador's high-quality assets, both in the reservoir or rock below ground, and with a unique mix of production and midstream facilities above ground, combined with the dedicated, driven, and talented people, are generating consistently high returns and growing shareholder value. Thank you for your time and attention today, and for your support and interest, and confidence in Matador. Thank you.
You know, thank you, Ray, for your... all your extra work and your friendship and dedication to Matador. We're very lucky to have all of you. Now I'd like to introduce Brian Willey to give a financial report. Brian?
Thank you. It's a true privilege to be able to be here today as we celebrate the 40th anniversary of the founding of First Matador, and the 20th anniversary of the founding of Second Matador. What a tremendous privilege it is for all of us to be able to be here. I will focus primarily today on what has occurred over the last 11 years since we became public in 2012. It doesn't matter which metric you look at, whether it's acreage, production, reserves, the midstream business, we begin paying a dividend. Whichever metric you look at, the growth has been tremendous. It's incredible. We'll go into a little bit more detail on a number of those, but I think that growth has led to this increase in share price.
The IPO price back in 2012 was $12 per share, and you'll see that's grown over 300%, where today we're trading over $50 per share. What a tremendous growth and testament to the people of this company and their work, and vision, and efforts, so they've been able to build a wonderful and tremendous asset. All of that's been done, as you can see, while oil prices have actually decreased. When we went public, we were right around $100 a barrel on oil, and that's decreased now, where we're hovering around 70. Despite the headwinds, despite these challenges with oil price, we've continued to grow and have these great opportunities.
Being more specific about some of these items, I think they say that a picture is worth 1,000 words. I think maybe this one's worth 150,000 net acres. We're able to see the growth from 2012, and you'll see there's just a few red spots on the map when we had 7,500 net acres. As it moves forward into 2017, we've now done the HEYCO deal, and we have implemented the brick-by-brick approach, and so you'll see more red in the middle section. Today, in 2023, you'll see the red, and you'll also see the blue, which is the advanced acres that we've talked about, and we get to 150,000 net acres.
What a great goal, as we kind of have this progress, as we've gone throughout over the years. That acquisition of the acreage has led and corresponding to a growth in our production. We have a saying that we see often here at Matador, "Profitable production, growth at a major pace." You'll hear that about production, you'll hear about other stuff as well. Profitable growth at a major pace over and over again. You'll see that on this slide, where it goes kind of up from the left to the right, increasing every single year, where we have this production growth. Even in 2020, you'll see despite the pandemic, we continued to have this profitable growth at a major pace.
Began with about 5,700 barrels of oil and gas equivalent per day. Now, this year, we expect to have 124,110 barrels of oil and gas equivalent per day in our production. It's this great, tremendous growth. Now, the acreage and the production then leads to this reserves growth. It's the same thing. You'll see the same kind of chart up into the right, where the reserves, when we went initially public, were 27 million barrels of oil and gas equivalent. Today, as we've already talked about, it's now at 463 million barrels of oil and gas equivalent. That's just incredible growth. That's over 17 times, if you go from the beginning to the end, that we've just increased and been able to grow over the years.
In addition to growing the E&P business, we've also had this opportunity to grow a complimentary midstream business. Joe talked about earlier when he was introducing Greg about the vision for the midstream, back when we went public and being able to hire Greg, and him saying he would come if we build a midstream business. It was great to be able to have that vision, then to hire people to be able to implement the vision and be able to build the midstream business. Back in 2015, I joined the company in 2014, and I think the midstream business was something we were just talking about. It was at its very beginning.
In 2015, we had about $4 million in EBITDA. You can just see over time how last year we had nearly $200 million in EBITDA. A business that's grown from, you know, negligible, almost nothing, to now it's worth approximately $2 billion. That doesn't even include the Pronto Midstream business, which we bought last year, and we are continuing to build. There's an opportunity that as we continue to grow upstream on the E&P side, we have that opportunity to continue to grow midstream as a complementary asset. As we think about the recent Advance acquisition, we just talked through a number of metrics that we've grown since we've been public back in 2012. Each of these metrics were increased in connection with the Advance acquisition. The Advance acquisition was accretive on every front.
It was accretive from an acre standpoint, as we added 18,500 net acres and 203 net locations. It was accretive on a production standpoint, as we added 25,450 barrels of oil equivalent per day, which was at the high end of our expectations when we bought it. That's for the first quarter, and it continues to be at the high end of our expectations. In addition, from a reserve standpoint, as we talked about earlier, it was accretive to our reserves, 160 million BOE of net reserves, with nearly $3 billion in PV-10 value as of December 31st. We just talked about the midstream. I mentioned Pronto Midstream, and this really does give value to Pronto Midstream and increase that asset as well.
Pronto was able to bring additional value to our acquisition of Advance, as we looked at the numbers and what we would pay for Advance. In addition, Advance, as it grows and as we develop those assets, they will be able to bring value to Pronto and be able to help it to grow as we expand over into Northern Lee County. That acquisition was made possible because of the strong balance sheet. For many years, we focused on the balance sheet and been very careful with it to make sure that it is a stable, strong balance sheet. You'll see, as of now, we have about $600 million in liquidity, actually, a little bit over that. At the end of last quarter, our debt-to-EBITDA ratio was near a record low, as it was 0.15 times.
Of course, since then, we did do the Advance acquisition, and we took on about $700 million in debt, which our last public disclosure was that we had repaid that down to $625 million, and we've continued to make meaningful repayments in connection with that debt. Our goal is that at the end of next year, we'll be able to pay down that debt completely, that the RBL debt will be down, back down to 0, where it was before we did the transaction. As we go forward, we target that leverage ratio of 1x. That's something as we look at different transactions and deals, that that's something that is important for us to be able to keep the balance sheet strong as we go forward. Because of that strong balance sheet, we're able to do acquisitions like Advance.
We're also able to pay the dividend. It was back in the first quarter of 2021 when we instituted the first dividend. It was two and a half cents per quarter or $0.10 on an annual basis. Later that year, the board doubled the dividend so that it was $0.20 on an annual basis. A year later, it was doubled again to $0.40 on an annual basis, and this year it's been increased by another 50%, so $0.15 a quarter or $0.60 on an annual basis. I know last week we got paid the dividend. I think it was on June first. My wife wants to thank Joe and the board because, you know, I'm sure she's bought something very nice, and as soon as it hit the account.
I think very meaningful here is up in the corner, you'll see the amount of money that we've returned to shareholders in dividends. Starting from $270,000 40 years ago, in only dividends, we returned $85 million to shareholders since the beginning of 2021. I think that is very impressive and worth appreciation. As Joe said earlier, as we look towards the future, last year in the fourth quarter and kinda beginning this year, where our exit rate was, and then looking to where we'll end this year, we will be at a 40% growth rate on oil, which is almost unprecedented in the industry. We'll have 143,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day.
Really with that target of 150,000 barrels of oil equivalent within our sights. Hopefully, we're here next year or the following year, and we're talking about hitting that next milestone and then looking at 175,000, as Joe said earlier, 200,000, and continuing to go up on that progress. It's been a great 11 years since we've been public, and we look forward to continuing to serve our shareholders as we go forward and continuing to build value, both through dividends and return of value and also as we grow the company as we go forward. Before I turn the microphone back to Billy and to Joe for closing remarks, I wanna just take a moment to thank Joe.
I think earlier, as we celebrate the 40th anniversary of the founding of Matador, we clapped for a number of people. We clapped for officers, we clapped for directors, we clapped for longtime shareholders. In typical Joe fashion, I think the one person we didn't clap for was Joe. It is his vision, his sacrifice, his leadership over the last 40 years that has led us so that we're able to be here today. On behalf of the employees, investors, shareholders, and families, and the thousands of lives that have been blessed, thank you, Joe.
You know, you were able to do that because my brother-in-law was out of the room. I want to recognize my, of course, Nancy, who, when we got started, didn't ask me too many questions about how things were going. It's been a team effort. I've always liked teams. Those are the sports I enjoyed most, were the teams, and I think we really have one. Over 40 years, interviewing people, Gaines and I tend to think there are two main buckets of people, there are all kinds of buckets, but two main ones. Either people who just want a job, they wanna come in, they wanna do their thing, they wanna leave at night, they don't wanna have other responsibilities.
The others are people who really wanna build a career and build professional expertise, and be a part of a team and learn from others. That's really what we're blessed with. We've got guys and women, men and women who come in, and they start out as I pick on Kathy all the time. She came in as a revenue accountant, and now she's our controller, you know, that she just kept learning more and more about accounting. We got geologists who learn different areas, and engineers who learn more than just reservoir engineering. It's this yearning, and I think y'all's attendance at this meeting, I see so many good faces, Mike Breard , Larry Wolfish, the interest that y'all take in them leads to inspiring them to go on and do more.
Having George here, you know, to work with, we just got a lot of help. So I wanna turn back. That applause was nice, and I appreciate it. Make no mistake, I appreciate it, but what I'm really excited is celebrating in the next few years when we hit $100 a share. Someone said, "Your progress is nice, but dividends are better." That's a more sincere way for us to show that things are headed our way. There's great progress and great friendships, and everybody's doing their part, everybody's working together, and that's something you just can't create with just going to work every day.
Everybody's ready to step up, and we appreciate y'all so much because you can imagine that first meeting with 17 of us here, saying, "What will we do next?" Thanks. I think we're headed for bigger and better things. I like our chances. Some of the statistics are just fantastic when you look at it, you know, almost 500 million barrels of oil and gas equivalent. I mean, that's terrific. The profitability and the technical knowledge, everything's come a long, long way. We look forward to getting with you next year. Tyler, I want you to stand up in case you have Horseshoe Questions.
That's the man, and his team will tell you, it's a remarkable innovation, but Billy's group, for all of his modesty, has had a lot, managed pressure drilling system, changed the game out there. Chris coming with his dual fuel systems and remote fracs, savings enormous amounts of money. We're gonna have, next year, a lot more to tell you and share with you, but we like our chances, and things are going. I haven't fully recognized, Van, our deal maker, and Van's one of those guys who can go out for lunch and come back with 2 deals. He does whatever it takes. We have 3 asset classes that are fairly overlooked by the analysts. You know, we sometimes wonder why is our stock not trading?
There's three things that really that they tend to overlook. One is the midstream. You know, they tend to look at the oil and gas assets, but they overlook the midstream, and that's $1 billion-$2 billion, which we're at 51%. Well, that adds a lot, $10 per share, almost. The second one is our behind pipe reserves that we have in the Cotton Valley in Northwest Louisiana. We have proved reserves there of 200-300 BCF, but they're behind pipe, not going anywhere, held by production, being gassed with the fluctuations that you've had, that's a more dependable bet to put our CapEx to work in New Mexico on primarily oil properties. You've got 200-300 BCF. We've proved it. We have one vertical well, it's made about 5 BCF.
There's real opportunity there when gas prices stabilize on a more predictable future. The third thing is the value of the undeveloped acreage itself that we have. We know we can drill it's good rock, and it's 150,000 acres, so that has a lot of value. It's hard to put a precise number, but I can tell you, having started with no acreage and doing one acre mineral deals, it's really nice to have the choice of 150,000 acres. As Billy says, the best basin in the world, they give and have what I believe is the staff that's probably one of the two or three best and getting better every day, 'cause these guys are learning every day.
We have a corny saying around there that I challenge them for each of them to get better every day, and each of them to help their team get better every day. They're on their way, they're doing it, I think you can see the useful nature of our officers and our people, and would like all the other Matador employees who haven't been called upon specifically to please stand. You know, you see how they respond. You know, look around, should we or should we not, right? Anyway, y'all are doing a super job, we're all so proud of you, and I think the shareholders will express their appreciation. Everybody's doing their part, Craig, are we at that point to move for adjournment?
Yes, sir.
Okay, I will entertain a motion for adjournment.
Moved.
Moved. Second?
Second.
Got a second. Okay, all those in favor, please signify by standing. Please come back next year!