Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Second Quarter 2021 Matador Resources Company Earnings Conference Call. My name is Tina, and I will be serving as your operator today. At this time, all participant lines are in a listen only mode. We will facilitate a question and answer session at the end of the company's remarks.
As a reminder, this conference is being recorded for replay purposes and the replay will be available on the company's website through August 31, 2021, as discussed in the company's earnings press release issued yesterday. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Max Schmitz, Capital Markets Coordinator for Matador. Mr. Schmitz, you may proceed.
Thank you, Tina, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for Matador's Q2 of 2021 earnings conference call. Some of the presenters today will reference certain non GAAP financial measures regularly used by Matador Resources in measuring the company's financial performance. Reconciliations of such non GAAP financial measures with comparable financial measures calculated in accordance with GAAP are contained at the end of the company's earnings press release. As a reminder, certain statements included in this morning's presentation may be forward looking and reflect the company's current expectations or forecast of future events based on the information that is now available. Actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements.
Additional information concerning factors that could cause actual results to differ materially is contained in the company's earnings release and the most recent quarterly report on Form 10 Q. Finally, in addition to our earnings press release issued yesterday, I would like to remind everyone that you can also find a slide presentation in connection with the Q2 2021 earnings press release under the Investor Relations tab on our website. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Joe Foran, our Chairman and CEO. Joe?
Thank you, Mac. It's a pleasure to be here today to have this kind of report to pass on to you. Normally, I'd say 2 or 3 things in particular to highlight, but there's a lot here. I would think Matador is at an inflection point. It's been an exceptional quarter.
Everything came together for us, great effort by our staff, both here in the office and in the field. And I think the results are sustainable, because many involved improvements in the process and wells that will produce for years to come at record low cost. So I invite you all to read the prepared remarks. They're a little long to read to you, but hope that you'll take the time to look those over. We included some slides that are on our website and I'm going to go quickly through those because that highlights what I'm trying to say, but also to share with you some of these accomplishments.
And so if you look at Slide A, you'll see that we had record EBITDA and free cash flow and everything was above expectations. The production was higher, the costs were lower and each group contributed to these results. Also exciting for me is that we repaid another 100,000,000 dollars on our debts. So our debts cut in half and we've gone at the last year at the high, we were nearly had a leverage ratio of 3. That's now down to 1.8.
And I like staying in the ones. So the balance sheet has strengthened as we predicted as we were able to bring the BLM properties online. The quarterly production was better than expected that these BLM wells, many of which are going to produce 1,000,000 to 2,000,000 barrels a piece. We have more zones than we really had originally anticipated. And also most important and that is sustainable, we have moved our capital efficiency really forward, so that now in 2018, we drilled one well that was over 2 miles that was 2 miles or more.
And this year, every well we drill will be 2 miles or more except one. So we moved our efficiency from about 2% to 98%. And the other thing that we have a MAXCOM room that follows our wells in real time as they're drilling horizontally and they've increased our time in zone from 70% to 100%. So you can see what kind of difference that makes in both reserves and production that to increase your productive footage by nearly a third. And this effort to improve capital efficiency follows all aspects of our business.
We try to be good operators who both watch revenue and expense and capital projects and then the per unit cost. So everybody is in an effort to provide the shareholders, make the most use of the shareholders capital that's been invested with us. We're already exceeding 2nd quarter 2021 guidance and that's enabled us to have some operational flexibility to bring some projects forward and really start preparing for 2022. The next slide I have is on Slide B, which shows the increasing contributions of our midstream asset. And not only does it have these important financial contributions, but it has operational enhancements to know that we will be have our pipe out there when the wells are ready to come online.
So from the environmental viewpoint, you're not trucking. You don't have the emissions problem, the pipes are ready and they take away and then the operational enhancement is that because San Mateo, the pipes are waiting when we're ready to turn on the Rodney Robinson wells and the Boris wells and they were producing too much volumes for it to be trucked. Plus your 3rd party may or may not be there, but our production group made it clear that they'd be there with the pipes and they were no matter what. The third thing is what I've already touched on is the borrowings outstanding and you can see that immediately prior to the BLM deal, we had a leverage ratio of 1.8. And then as we did that project, the debt, we borrowed the money, low interest rates to do the projects on the BLM acreage and it reached a high in the Q3 of 2020 a year ago at $520,000,000 and we've reduced that now to $240,000,000 in outstanding borrowings for the back to the 1.8 ratio.
So good planning by the financial group, good cost control by the operating group and now those wells are delivering record production rates and will exceed the original estimates that we had on what the cumulative production would be. The next thing is we try to establish with you as the credibility that when we set a priority, we achieve it and give you markers, so you can see whether we pass those milestones or not. And the 2021 priorities deliver free cash flow, pay down debt, initiate dividend, continued capital efficiency improvements, the focus on the federal properties, growth San Mateo have all been achieved and earned the San Mateo performance incentives as well as the employer proactive hedging strategy. So we did all those priorities. And on the milestones, as you can see, we've done the first three.
The next Boris wells, we'll get them turned to sales and we still have the greater Stebbins area to finish, but it's underway. So in the left corner, you see the capital efficiency, what I was talking about, cutting the cost in almost half and the San Mateo EBITDA growth. And then the capital efficiency, what I also mentioned is that we've improved capital efficiency as measured by the length of your lateral feet drilled in your various wells from 1% in 2018 to 98 percent today. So going forward, we've tried to give you provide you with some guidance and that we are the outperformance in the first half of the year has allowed us to accelerate the Bonney well completions. It sets us up better for 2022.
So we get a full year of production from these wells. So we feel very excited as good as we're doing here, we'll do even better next year and we lock our chances. So with that, I'd like to turn it back and open the floor for questions. But one last, if I have not recognized one of the groups, I'd sure like to make sure I did a universal shout out because it was really exciting the way that every group from the field to the office and within the office each department did its part in achieving these results. So Tina, first to you for the first question.
Thank you.
Our
first question is from Scott Hanold with RBC.
Joe, you had indicated that the operational change really sets up for a good 2022. Can you all provide a little bit of color like what pulling forward these wells? We can kind of see what happens in 2021 based on your guidance. But can you talk through like what that might look like in 2022 at a high level? Based on our numbers, it looks like you all should be able to get firmly above 100 a day in 2022 at this point?
Yes. Good morning, Scott. This is David. I think that we expect to see quite a bit of improvement next year as a result of what we're doing here. I mean, when you think about it, as Joe mentioned, not only will we turn these Boros and Stebbins wells on in the Q4, some of which we'll have to shut in the Boros wells, some of them for a little bit, but we'll also have this the pull through from turning these Bonney wells to sales now probably in February as opposed to April, May as we were originally planning.
So that in and of itself should help us out quite a bit in terms of our expectations for 2022. I don't know that I want to comment on whether we're going to be at 100,000 BOE a day at this point. I think it's a little early. I think we'll want to wait and see what how these wells come in, what they do, if there are any other modifications that we might make between then and now. But look, I think that we're very optimistic about how 2022 is going to look.
And I certainly think that the Q1 of 2022 will start off very well for us.
Okay, fair enough. And maybe a little bit on your federal acreage. Obviously, you all have secured a number of permits. And I think you have some extensions that we're looking to get in addition to some sundries. Can you give us a
bit where we're at there?
Yes, sure. First of all, I think we feel like that things are going very well with the BLM and office there in Carlsbad. And we certainly thank all of our colleagues there in that office for their help in pushing through the various approvals that we need. I think as we mentioned on the call last time, we have focused more in recent months on getting approvals of the sundries, which are sort of the amendments to the existing permits. And a lot of that is because it's allowed us to make some modifications to the drilling or completion designs that we really that we'd originally proposed for those wells.
As an example, one that I cite often is the fact that at Stateline, we had permitted all those wells for 4 strings of casing. Pretty early in the process, our drilling teams determined that those wells could be completed or drilled and then completed, which is 3 strings of casing. And so but in order to achieve that, we had to go back and get a sundry or an amendment to the permit. Those have all been granted and we've been really focused, Scott, on kind of getting those just sort of ahead of the spudding of new wells and that's all gone great. I don't think we've missed a beat there.
So I think that's all proceeded very well. You are correct. We did have an extension that was pending, and I'm pleased to say that we got it. So we have received the first extension and feel like that that process looks like that it's working well and we'll continue. We've got more in the hopper and we'll continue to pursue that as well.
So all in all, I think that our team is very pleased with the way things are going. And again, appreciate the help of the BLM, certainly appreciate the help of our own staff to continue to do what we need to do to make sure we've got the permits that we need. I think we're all gratified that in this 1st 7 months of the year that really we haven't faced any significant impediments at all to our ability to drill, complete, operate our wells and things continue to move forward just fine.
Great. Thank you.
Your next question comes from Neal Dingmann with Trust Securities. Neil, your line is open.
Sorry about that guys. Couldn't help but notice guys just the upside we're seeing on San Mateo. You guys have been laying that out now for quite some time, really coming to fruition. I'm just wondering what again, you're talking about $70,000,000 already in EBITDA potential this year. I'm just wondering what type of growth could we see there?
Could that go commensurate with what you might see in the upside? I mean, just any details, David, you or Matt or the guys could talk about that?
Yes, Neal. This is Matt. Good morning. Thanks for the question. Where we stand right now, Neal, we've kind of we've built the bigger components of our midstream business there.
We're kind of in the add on stage, if you will. So I think one of the things that we're looking forward to is continuing to service Matador certainly as the tenant anchor tenant, but also adding these 3rd party volumes. And so as we've done that and we've been successful this year in all three pipes, we've added oil, we've added water, we've added gas. So we're to the point where if we get a customer that comes along with enough volumes that we need to add to that system, it's not like we have to have a big investment to go that direction. We can go ahead and say it's water, we can go ahead and drill a saltwater disposal well, additional saltwater disposal well.
If it's just connecting oil and pipe, it's a pretty quick build to get that done. So I think we'll keep our eyes on that. And if we do end up landing a big fish, certainly something that we would do is make sure that we have some sort of commitment from that customer that would assure us that we would get our assets paid for.
Yes. I'd like to, Neil add to that is that Matt and his group and Greg and Matt Spicer have done a really good job of attracting quality third party business to us from companies that are A rated, the big companies and if you see their client list, there's not one company that dominates it. It's a whole bunch of very long time operators out there and just a quality list. So that takes also a lot of the risk out of the project and we're happy to expand. And then I've got to give them commend them.
Nearly all the companies on that list are now repeat customers, have done more than one project with us. So that's a good sign of the service and very pleased and very pleased with the way that Five Point has worked with us. They've been a good partner and we feel like we've made a good team.
Yes, Joe, just one thing. Neil, you've known us long enough and you saw us put our acreage position together in basin. This is David says brick by brick and we're taking the same approach with San Mateo. And what Joe said, we've gone out no deal is too small for us. We want to make sure that the deals we do, we make money on which we do.
But we've been able to build this business brick by brick just like we did E and P
side. Very well seen. And then just a follow-up, maybe a little bit on Scotts, but I'm just taking a little bit different approach on really like what you guys are doing, moving the operations on the completion. And I'm just wondering, maybe, Matt, for you or Billy, I'm just wondering more sort of qualitatively, how does I'm sure that gets you excited from an operation standpoint. I'm just wondering, by moving that and having more of a constant sort of operation, could you just walk us through what gets you more excited about moving the program?
I know David touched on this a little bit, but would sure love to hear more on just what you think kind of just maybe qualitative improvements and what will this will do not through this year, but even into next year?
Neal, I'm going to start off and others will back clean up on this. But one of the first things is that on the Boris wells, there was I think 800 or more frac stages. They got them all done without a single without any material downtime, all done. And then on the Bonney wells, I think there was 750, some in that order, 1500. So you had 1500 frac stages that were done without any material downtime.
All the costs aside, we wanted those same guys continue to work for us so that instead of releasing them, so somebody else can get the benefit of their skills and their ability to get many fracs done in a day. We've elected to keep them, which has brought about lower cost, greater efficiency. And when you think of 1500 fact stages done pulled off right, that says a lot about the crew. We feel like they're in the varsity and we don't want to give them up to some less proven people that was important to me, but I'll let Matt or Billy or David say what's important to them.
Yes. I think Joe, you've hit on a lot of things. The efficiencies you get doing operations like this are meaningful. And you've got a couple of frac crews out there. There you get these different efficiencies related to having both crews running at the same time.
But really what you get is a constant area where you can improve. I mean, it's like some type of sports team. You practice for a reason. You practice to get better. And so if we just look back, if you look back in 2018, our cycle times to complete these wells to frac and we get them drilled out, get them ready for flow back was about 45 days.
And so in the first half of this year, we've reduced that down to 24 days, which is a 19 day improvement. So there's 19 days that you don't have to pay supervision, you don't have to pay rental, you don't have to pay these other things. On the other side of it, there's 19 days there that you don't have to shut in offset wells. So you get the efficiency not only on the cost side, but on the production side of things. And so that's one metric we look at.
And we just recently did our simulfrac, first simulfrac and we did really well there. We were well over 2,000 feet of completed lateral length per day. If you compare that back to 2018, that's about 900. So you can say we more than doubled that with our first simulfrac. And so we anticipate that probably 60% of these wells that we'll drill and complete in the back half of 2021 will be simulfrac wells.
And so we've calculated and actually with our first experience with the simulfrac, we saved about $250,000 per well. So that's about 6% of the completion cost just on the Simulfrac. And so on our 4 well pad, that's $1,000,000 per well that we're saving on that. So there's some real savings, some real efficiencies that we'll see going forward. I don't know, Bill, if you have something to
do. Those are all real good. I mean, I pile on and mentioned things we talked about. David was talking about cutting up eliminating casing strings and that improves our cycle time, we get oil faster, but also depending on which string it is, that saves us another $500,000 to $1,000,000 So that's a good thing too. And like you mentioned with $1,000,000 saving with the simul frac, that's a big deal.
But even the wells where we're doing the zipper fracs, we're getting better at those too and getting more footage per day and improving all the way around there. And we also talked about on the production side, we're doing great things there and getting all everything on pipe, everything on water and oil on pipe and that's helping us out there too, taking trucks off the road. We all know increasing costs and fuel and things like that. So eliminating all that, just doing better all around.
Well, Matt, sounds like we better start taking about $1,000,000 off the well cost going forward. So, love to hear that.
I think we've got this budget to go through.
Neil, I didn't think I was going to have to step in, but
maybe. We've calculated on this completed lateral length per foot. We've calculated that every 300 foot that we get better is about $75,000 per well. So those efficiencies are meaningful.
And hats off to Universal and Halliburton They've been working with us and just doing a really good job and standing behind their work.
Great comments. Thanks, Joe.
Thanks, Neil.
Our next question is from John Freeman with Raymond James.
Good morning, guys.
Hey, John. Hey, John. And
I want to follow-up just at the end there on what Neil has asked you just to get a better idea of sort of what's built into that second half twenty twenty one sort of cost per foot guidance. Obviously, you all have been just running dramatically ahead of schedule the first half of the year with the averaging the 6.55 a foot and realizing you all you took down the guidance that was 7.30 a foot to 6.95. And I'm just trying to get a sense of sort of the gives and takes of I know that the Greater Stebbins area typically goes well as a little more expensive, but then what Matt mentioned on the simul fracs and the cost reductions there. Just trying to get a sense, as Neil was kind of alluding to, kind of what's baked into the second half cost per foot numbers? How much of this is just marking the mark what happened in the first half of the year and kind of leaving the second half the same?
John, this is Matt. I'll take the first stab at this. I think David probably has some comments too. But kind of what we've looked at, we anticipated cost increases we went throughout the first half of the year. We really didn't see a whole lot of those.
The back half of the year, we are seeing some of those and it's kind of a lot of it's dependent on crude price relative to what the price of diesel is. So on the drilling side, we're seeing cost increases, say as much as 20% on the pre drill stuff, building location, moving in rigs, anything that involves a lot of use of diesel, we're seeing those costs. So probably if you roll everything into it on a drill and completion basis,
you
may have 4%, 5%, six percent cost increase on the drilling side. On the completion side, you see the same thing. You see obviously, these frac crews run a lot of diesel. So that cost is up. The cost to transport sand is up.
Sand itself, the proppant is up 35% or so, but it's a pretty small portion of the completion cost. So we're probably looking at 5% or 6% on the completion side. So that's kind of built into that 695 number that you've got. But then we also anticipate that the operations team, they're going to be able to become more and more efficient as we go along. So I think we feel pretty good about that $695,000,000 number.
And John, I might just add to the second part of your question. I do think that the reduction there does reflect a bit of a mark to market or mark to the first half of the year and that we had done better. And so that's sort of enabled us to lower the rest of the full year down a little bit. I don't know that we've made a lot of change one way or the other in our expectations for the rest of the year for the reasons that Matt said. The original estimates we had for 10% inflation in the 3rd 4th quarters of the year are still there in what we have budgeted to the extent that we can do better than that or mitigate some of these costs.
We might do better here in the second half of the year. But it those original assumptions are still reflected in our numbers for the rest of the year.
That's helpful. I appreciate the context. And then my follow-up question, obviously, historically, you've been pretty active on the hedging front. And now that we've got the balance sheet's got it's below 2 times leverage and pretty good line of sight on being able to reduce that a good bit further over the next 12 months. There's been some of your peers have sort of talked about as the balance sheet improved kind of across the industry, some companies maybe being less inclined to hedge as much as they used to.
I'm just curious if you all's balance sheet strength, if it continues to improve, if in any way that might impact you all's hedging strategy going forward or if you think it will still be sort of the same as it's been historically?
Well, John, this is David again. I think that I think the way we view it is, I think we always feel like we've been fairly opportunistic and tried to make the right calls with regard to hedging. It's unusual for us to go into a year. I can't think of one recently where we haven't had some hedging, headed into a year, but sometimes that'll be on the order of 30% or something like that. And then we'll we may dial that up a little bit during the course of the year if we think it's appropriate.
I think you can see reflected in the slide deck that we put out along with the presentation that we did in the recent just recently begin to add to our hedging position for 2022. I think we've got about 10% of our oil hedged and we added some additional hedges on natural gas through the winter months. So, we'll continue to look, we're pretty optimistic on where the commodity is going to be. And certainly, as you know, things are backwardated on the strip. So that always kind of impacts your decision, but we monitor it very closely.
And I think that as we go forward, it wouldn't surprise me if we added a little more going into the year.
I appreciate it. Thanks guys. Well done.
Thanks John. Thanks John.
Our next question is from Gabe Daoud with Cowen.
Hey, good morning, everyone. Hey, guys. I was hoping we can maybe just go back to San Mateo for a minute. Just curious if this incremental business from 3rd party, just kind of how that impacts volumes this year and next year? And then I know there's a little bit of a CapEx raise associated with that, but curious if that requires any additional build out beyond what's already been communicated?
Yes, Gabe, the things that we have in hand now are in the budget that was the increase you saw in the CapEx for San Mateo. Things that are out there that we may get, well, obviously, we can't budget for that yet. So I think for the volumes that we have locked up right now that that'll be taken care of with the CapEx we have in there. If we're able to have some success and we hope we do have that success in the back half of the year, that would probably be incremental to that. So we just don't know what that is at
this current time.
Okay. Thanks, Matt. That's helpful. And then just a follow-up, Joe. I guess I was just curious if you could give us your latest and greatest thoughts on M and A and just consolidation generally and if there's anything interesting that you guys may be looking at from an asset package standpoint or even if it's just corporate transactions?
Just any thoughts on the landscape and color there would be helpful. Thanks guys.
Gabe, I'd just say like this is that we are a public company and as a public company, we try to play a straight game. If someone makes us a serious offer or inquiry, we try to take it very seriously. In the past, Matador has done a number of transactions public. We sold first Matador to a public company. And then this Matador, we did a deal with Chesapeake on part of our Haynesville position that enabled us to go to the Eagle Ford.
We established that you could produce oil from the smaller poor throats of the shales. And we took profits from that and moved out to the Delaware, which has been good to us. And we've also had been active in the private markets. We did a deal with HEICO and HEICO is still our partner or still part of our fabric. People that work for HEICO still work for us.
George Yates is still a real good friend and valued shareholders. So we're open to that and particularly any what I'd call small private old, particularly old school oil and gas family company of doing deals with where there's a cultural fit and outlook fit and we have criteria, we wanted to be sure that it's a good deal for the shareholders. As you know that David, Matt and I and the other members of our executive team are large shareholders and we make more money by the shares going up a dollar or 2 than we do from our salary compensation. So that's our primary deal. Is this good for the shareholders?
Because again, we didn't come up through private equity. We came up through friends and family and that's primary for us. Is it a good deal for the shareholders and not necessarily, we're just a good deal for the management. But we in the end, we ask ourselves, we think we're opportunistic here as we are in hedging, but in the end we ask, does this make us not just bigger, but better? And that's why we've continued most often with just bolt on acreage acquisitions that bolt on to our existing position so that we have less risk there because we know that area and it's small and easy to digest and doesn't require meshing of systems, computer systems or cultures or people and we found that to be pretty effective.
So we're open to deals. We're particularly as I said with companies not we're not as interested or we don't see the appeal of private equity companies, it may create a hangover or a public to public. We're enjoying good growth right now with this existing effort in bolt ons and dealing with people we know, but we're open to it. We want everybody to know we play a straight game. And but fortunately, our teams had been able to produce plenty of A plus locations and that's what we're going after and that we have a very rich inventory of that 20 years plus that affords us a lot of choice and haven't had the need to stretch out for some big deal with some big public.
Does that help, guys?
Yes. No, that's great, Joe. Thanks so much for the color. Thanks, everyone.
Okay, Joe. All right. Next question?
Your next question is from Michael Scialla with Stifel, I'm sorry.
Yes, good morning everybody.
Hi, Mike. Hi.
Joe, you walked us through the debt reduction over the past three quarters and you said you're comfortable in the sub two times leverage range. Just wanted to see how you're thinking about further debt reduction from here versus maybe potentially increasing the dividend. I know you just recently implemented the dividend, but is there a debt level or leverage target you want to achieve before you consider ramping that up?
Well, Mike, there's always a lot of variables in what you're trying to achieve. And we are certainly in favor of further debt reduction. Exactly the pace is dependent on a lot of circumstances, but I think a shareholder will safely see further debt reduction as we go along. And we fully expect and hope to increase the dividend over time and certainly can't say what exactly when and where we'll increase it by how much, but it's something that if prices remain steady or operations results remain steady, all those different factors, we expect another increase in the dividend before too long. We want a reputation for raising the dividend from time to time as results operations and results can justify.
So the first priority is debt reduction and then the course the second one is to keep increasing the dividend. Don't not sure about the pace, but it's certainly that we'll study going forward at each of our board meetings here on in. I think it comes up every time and we'd look at it and we want to be prudent. And again, I point out how much any shares that our executive group owned and a dividend increase is important to all of us in the company because our shareholder in the company goes deep. We have 250 or so shareholders in the company now between that and our field staff.
So you can be sure it'll any thoughts of dividend increase get a lot of hard study here.
Very good. Thanks for that. And David, you said that it's too early to give guidance on 2022. You're not ready to commit to say production is going to go above 1 100,000 BOE a day. But is it fair to say with the 11 Vonnie wells coming on in February that first quarter production should be up pretty sharply from Q4.
And given that, are you still planning to maintain the 4 rigs next year? Or are there any plans that or any way
you do anything differently? I'm just going to say 1 or 2 sentences and then Dave you take over. I just say our plans are always flexible and we think that has to be one of our strength that when circumstances change, will change. And it's not that we are once we set a course, we're never going to alter it or amend it or tweak it or whatever. We think about that all the time.
What knobs can we change to make the value go up more? So we're a value proposition rather than this is the way it is and it's we're not going to change. And I'm excited about the opportunities and choices we have. David?
Yes, Mike. I think that I think if things go as we would expect that it's fair to assume that we'll see a nice up quarter in the Q1 of 2022. So, I think that that is a reasonable assumption.
Your next question is from Jake Roberts with Tudor, Pickering and Holt. Good morning.
Good morning.
I'm just curious looking at the CapEx guide for the remainder of the year, if you could provide some commentary on the non op side of things and maybe particularly confidence that we won't see that move higher to year end?
Yes. Good morning. This is David again. Well, again, I think what we tried to do is just update our shareholders on our expectations with regard to non op activity here at the end of the year. We as I think we pointed out in the release, have had a couple of our operating partners that have decided to make some modifications to their own programs and have deferred activity from the latter part of 2021 into 2022.
I think that we expect that these non operated wells will get drilled and I fully expect that Matador will participate in those opportunities. We have already committed to do so, frankly.
This is
just some minor changes in operations. But the fact is, don't think they're going to happen in 2021. Now I think they're more likely to happen in 2022. So it just felt like to us that it was the right thing to do to update our shareholders in the market on that. It's really nothing more than that.
And just as we change our plans from time to time, they change theirs and we don't really control that. But I will say that I think that our non op team does a very good job of having relationships with our partners and staying close to our partners, so that we have a little
I think we have a
good insight into what their plans are going forward. So really that's all that's reflected today.
Great. Thank you. And maybe as a second one, just curious on your thoughts on the Haynesville asset in terms of obviously the gas prices are significantly improved. I'm just curious in terms of maybe activity or even circling back to the M and A discussion earlier, just your thoughts on Louisiana in general?
Well, I'd just say that Haynesville made some great wells and it's been very good to us. And in particular in our deal with Chesapeake, we were able to reserve the difference between 75% and the existing NRI. So in a number of cases, we're up there with 90% in our eyes that make wells all that much more profitable. The other aspect of it, it's say little known, but I thank you for asking it is when we did deal with Chesapeake, we reserved all the uphole rides, the Cotton Valley. And we probably have some in the neighborhood of 200,000,000,000 cubic feet of reserves in the Cotton Valley.
We have no plans to drill at this time because gas prices have been until this year kind of of down and we've had enough opportunities in the Delaware and the Eagle Ford and in the Haynesville that that wasn't necessary, but it's HBP waiting to be developed and makes for a very nice gas bank. So we probably continue to put more emphasis on selling brick by brick or Haynesville or Eagle Ford assets as opposed to our Haynesville assets. But again, serious offer gets serious consideration.
Thanks, guys. Appreciate the time.
Yes. Thanks, Jay.
And our final question comes from Gail Nicholson with Stephens.
Good morning, everybody. Your free cash flow profile is very attractive and you've had really good progress paying down the revolver. I was just kind of curious
on the 20 16 year notes.
I think they become callable in September. And do you guys have any thoughts about that in regards to retiring those versus potentially like pushing out the maturities at a lower interest rate?
Hey, Gail, it's David. Well, I don't know that we have any immediate plans to do that, but it certainly is something that I think we it's an option. It's something that we have considered and have talked about. We haven't made any immediate plans to do so. I don't think I'd be doing my job if I wasn't bringing up those kind of alternatives or opportunities to the company and to the Board for consideration.
But we haven't made any immediate plans.
Okay, great. And then just looking at
LOE, another nice reduction quarter over quarter. Can you just talk about the inflationary environment surrounding LOE in the back half of 'twenty two? And then, what workover activity looks like in 'twenty two the back half of 'twenty two versus the first half of 'twenty one?
Hey, Gail, this is Matt. LLE, this was another very good quarter for us in regards to going forward as cost increases. A lot of the things that we talked about on the drilling and completion that were affected by the price of fuel, LOE is subject to the same thing, the work overage used fuel just to deliver the chemicals used fuel. So we are seeing some increases on that side. I think the next quarter we've got the production will be down a little bit, so that'll make it a little more difficult.
But I really liked the way the team's approaching things. We've got through the winter months and did what I think really well. And summer has its own challenges too, but Glenn Stifton and his team and particularly the guys in the field, they get out in front things. They don't wait till things happen to start reacting. So I think we'll see some good cost control in regards to LOE.
And I think the second part was the work over pace. Was that right, Gail?
Yes, sir.
Yes. So most of the work over work we have comes along with when we're ready to change from one form of artificial lift to another and that's usually baked into the plan. The other part when we have rod jobs that need to be done, we'll have a rod part and rig up on that and fix that or maybe an ESP that goes down and go and fix that. So those are kind of you just kind of have to do some windage there to know you've got, say, 130 rod pump wells and you're going to have so many failures a year. So that's just kind of the way we build that in.
As far as any major workovers on the existing horizontal wells, we most of our wells are new enough. We're not contemplating any of that activity.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Thanks, Gail. Thanks, Gail. Thanks, Gail.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This ends the Q and A portion of this morning's conference call. I'd like to turn the call over to management for closing remarks.
Thank you, Tina. Again, we appreciate everybody listening in, taking the time. And in particular, I'd also again once again thank the staff. I think everybody really put in the extra effort and you can see the results. I would just like to end by saying more formally.
We got more questions on the first half of twenty twenty one and the first half of twenty twenty two. But I believe not only the second half of twenty twenty one will be exciting for us, but also all of 2022 will be exciting as we work to continue to generate additional free cash flow, lower cost, reduce debt, pay dividends to our shareholders and grow the value of our oil and natural gas and midstream assets. We're pleased with the growth in our capital efficiency and the improvement in our unit cost amounts and the continued building of our inventory of A plus locations. And we believe all this creates a stronger value creation for Matador stakeholders in the remainder of this year and going and in the years to come. As maybe if you know, I started First Matador back in 1983 with 270,000.
It's just hard to believe I pinch myself when I say we're now approaching $4,000,000,000 in value even though we sold 1st Matador and started over in 2,003. So it's been quite a ride, very exciting, but we still think our various years are yet to come. And with that, I'll sign off. Thanks again and feel free to come see us or give us a call at any time.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation today. This concludes the program.