Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the First Quarter 2021 Matador Resources Company Earnings Conference Call. My name is Sarah, and I'll be serving as the operator for today. At this time, all participants 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 May 31st, 2021, as discussed in the company's earnings press release issued yesterday. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Mac Schmitz, Capital Markets Coordinator for Matador. Mr. Schmitz, you may proceed.
Thank you, Sarah. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for Matador's First Quarter 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 the 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 forecasts of future events based on 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 its most recent quarterly report on Form 10-Q. 555
Finally, in addition to our earnings press release, I would like to remind everyone that you can find a slide presentation in connection with the first quarter 2021 earnings release under the investor relations tab on our corporate website. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Joe Foran, our Chairman and CEO. Joe?
Thank you, Mac. Good morning to everyone, and thank you for participating in today's earnings conference call. We appreciate your time and interest in Matador very much. I'm gonna turn the call back to the operator in a moment to take your questions. First, I wanted to make a few quick points. First, as you all noticed that we have continued to make good progress on our leverage ratio and borrowings. At the end of the fourth quarter, we were about 2.9, today we're at 2.5. Second, the revenues are up, obviously, on commodity prices. Even more importantly, we've substantially reduced our costs, not from hitting on our vendors and beating them down so much, as working with them, which we greatly appreciate, to make our operations more efficient.
We've reduced our time on wells, fracking efficiency, and effectiveness, and we want to thank each of our vendors for the way they've cooperated and worked with us. These costs have come down dramatically, and as we all know, when you have an extra $1 revenue, the royalty owner takes his share, the government takes their severance tax, sales and use tax, and the like, and you're generally left with about 65% of every dollar. The cost side, every dollar saved goes to the bottom line, and we get to keep. That's a big part of the difference. Finally, I'd like to stress that we've been through a lot in the past year, and there've been a lot of challenges with the pandemic, with the weather, with prices. Working our way through that has been a total team effort.
Everybody here at Matador has contributed, all across the spectrum, and you're likely to hear today how our guys in the field, they loaded up groceries in the truck and threw it in a bedroll and slept in their trucks to keep the production on. Teams here have worked together to plan the drilling schedule and to work on cost together and the geology, keeps coming up with new zones. When we went out to the Delaware a few years ago from the Eagle Ford and made that our main area, we were basing it on three zones. Today, it's my understanding, as Ned will probably speak at some time on a question, we are producing from 18 different zones and think we'll be over 20 by the end of the year. Just great. Same way on San Mateo.
When our production group was ready to turn on the wells, the pipes were there waiting for them, so we weren't having to truck out the oil or the water. All of it, including the gas, was on pipe, which was good for our ESG as well as the bottom line. With that, let me turn the call back to the operator for any questions that you may have.
Thank you. To ask a question, you will need to press star then one on your telephone. To withdraw your question, please press the pound key. Ladies and gentlemen, due to time constraints, we ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Again, ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up until all have had the chance to ask a question, after which we will welcome additional questions from you. Our first question is from Scott Hanold with RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now open.
Thank you. Congratulations on the strong quarter. It's good to see that leverage reduction coming quicker than expected. My first question is on some of the recent well performance and cost performance of these longer lateral and federal wells. Can you give us some color on what to expect from them? It seems like the Boros wells came on and are holding in there pretty good. I know the Voni wells obviously have the longer laterals. Can you give us a sense of what the expectations are for those things? Are they holding in a little bit better based on well management? Along with that, maybe some color on the cost side, because I know you all tried some simul-fracs in some of these wells, have seen some pretty dramatic cost reduction in the plan going forward.
Is that something you can replicate or plan to replicate on future drilling?
Good morning, Scott. This is David. I'll take the production side of the question or the well performance side, and then I'll ask Matt to step in and talk a little bit about the costs and the fracs. I think we're extremely pleased with the wells that we drilled, frankly, all over the basin, but at Rodney Robinson and Stateline. Those have been some exceptional wells. You are correct, the Boros wells have continued to be very strong. We had, as I recall, about a 6 million BOE increase in our reserve this past year attributable to revisions upward, and a lot of that was due to some of the Boros wells as well as the Rodneys and others that have continued to do well.
I think when we put the little shareholder letter out the first of the quarter, we talked about how those 13 wells had made something like 3.8 million BOE already in the first six months of production. They're hanging in there very well. I think the Voni wells are off to a very good start, so very pleased with those. We're anticipating that those wells will be probably actually even a little better than the Boros wells. I think that you don't always see although the IPs are excellent, those wells, we'll see the little kick from the longer laterals as we get more history on these wells. My prediction would be that we'll see the proportionate increase in EURs going forward. All good right now. Matt, you want to talk about the cost?
Yes, Scott, good morning. We're really excited about the drilling and completion costs and most excited probably about the efficiency related to both. Just a little background on this. We've now drilled over 75 of these 2-mi laterals, we're getting better as we go. What I'd like to point to, Scott, if we just look back at the first round of Boros wells that we drilled in the summer of last year, we spent about $800 per completed lateral foot on that. These Voni wells were 610, that's 20%, 25% better just on the cost. I will say one most important things to us is that we don't sacrifice any quality in doing that, and we haven't. Our MaxCom team continues to hit it out of the park.
They're up to, well, earlier this morning, I thought it was 116 drilling records, and Billy just tells me right before the call it's 117. We calculate that's probably a $15 million cost savings related just to MaxCom, and they're staying in zone well over 90%, 95% of the time. I'll just point to a well that's not the first Boros or the Voni wells, Scott. It's one of the later Boros wells that we just finished. The Wolfcamp B well. The previous record on the Boros was about 31 days, and the guys did it in about 16 .5 . That's 14. 5 days that they saved. As we said in the past, if you contemplate that being $100,000 per day, that's about $1.4 million in savings. They continue to knock it out of the park on the drilling side.
On the completion side, we've improved our efficiency there. In, let's say, 2018, we were completing about 900 ft per day, this year we're averaging 1,550 ft per day. We just finished a couple of Stebbins wells, our Ted wells up there, and we averaged 2,265 ft per day. That helps us from a couple of different ways. Number one, the service company realizes that they're going to get to pump more frac stages per day, they adjust that into their cost. We're paying less for well head equipment, trailer supervision, all the daily rental items that we have out there. Glenn and his team come in, and they've modified their flow back procedure where we're using less equipment and saving several hundred thousand dollars.
Just all in all, just a great team effort, and we anticipate that we'll just keep drilling them faster and completing them better.
Yeah. Matt, could you give a little color on the simul-frac, how that went and if it's applicable on doing that going forward?
Yeah, sure, Scott. It's a really good tool for a four-well pad, which we have probably 60% of the remaining pads for the year will be four-well pads. Our first experience, we anticipated that we would save about $220,000 per well. We actually calculate that we're saving about $250,000. We're off to a good start. We averaged around 2,200 ft per day with simul-frac. For the first crack out of the box, I think it's a home run there, and we'll be looking to improve as we go forward.
Guess what, Matt? We had like 750 stages there on the Voni that without a hitch.
Yeah. Between the Boros and the Voni, it's 1,550 stages.
Yes. That's awesome.
That's a lot of frac work.
Yeah, it's pretty impressive. My follow-up, I guess, Joe, you led me into my question, and maybe we can hear from Ned. Obviously, 18 zones, potential of 20, and it feels like this is a question that comes up about once a year. Strategically, as you go forward, how should we think about what zones are you finding that are going to be most strongly economic? Should we start to think about you guys, as you start looking into 2022, to really refining, targeting some of the better zones first, or how do you see that development strategy going forward?
Yeah. Scott, I'm going to say this first part and then let Ned really get more specific. Overall, our guidance is still that profitable growth at a measured pace. While there's an abundance of zones to go after, and we put plenty of rigs, the first key is, Matador's went from, at the time we went public, down there, bottom of 150 to one of the 20 approximately largest E&P companies by market cap. So we're more of a tortoise than a hare, but we like that moving at a measured pace and staying profitable.
Many thanks to the geological group that Ned has helped build that keep coming up with good ideas, and we've been able to squeeze in testing those zones as we drill these multitude of wells to stay fresh, and just give enormous credit to the asset teams and to Ned for coming up with ideas and being confident enough to test them out, and it's worked out pretty well. Ned, many thanks to you and to the asset managers, the team leads that we have for affirming your ideas. Go ahead, Ned.
Thank you, Joe. It really is a full team effort here. It starts with the land and legal group getting the units put together, and then the geoscience team and the engineers working together to identify these targets. Really how we've done this in a lot of ways is focusing on what has worked in a lot of our early assets. The X and Y sands, we started out with those in Wolf and pushed those to Rustler Breaks, and then hats off to Trent Goodwin and his team for pushing those up into the Stebbins asset area with great success. One of the zones that we really like right now has been the First Bone.
The Ray well, I'm sorry, in Rustler Breaks is flying under the radar right now, but that's a great well, and you'll see us continue to push that zone around the basin. There's a lot left to do in this basin, and I think just letting the rocks speak for themselves and keeping an open mind to what we test and how we look at things around the basin has been really a winning approach for us. You'll see us keep doing that.
That's good color. Appreciate it.
Well, thank you, Scott.
Our next question is from Neal Dingmann of Truist Securities. Your line is open.
Morning, all. Thanks for the time. Joe, my first question maybe for you or David. You guys obviously are doing a great job of hitting your leverage goals, probably even ahead of what I think a lot of us were thinking now. I'm just wondering, will y'all consider, I'm wondering, let's say, once you get to that two times, which I think is very possible and likely this year, would y'all consider at that point maybe a more robust shareholder return? Would you prefer even continue to pay down the debt with perhaps the lion's share? Would you consider maybe external, internal growth? Just wondering sort of plans if you do hit that target, as I think ahead of schedule. Nice job on that, by the way.
Neal, candidly, we're going to consider all three of those alternatives. That's one of the things that we're hoping that the COVID will ease itself so we can get back on the road and meet with our shareholders in person, hear from them what they think, as well as meet with you analysts, who may come by and want to get together where we can discuss and hear your thoughts, look at what some of the other companies are doing, and consider all three of those or parts of all three of those. You might not have concentration on one. You may have some of debt reduction and some of raising the dividend. Look, we just paid our first dividend. Give us a little break. That was just 30 days ago.
I was waiting for the next, Joe.
The debt's going to be a continuing thing to reduce, and thus far, we're not in any big rush to add rigs or anything. It's got to make sense, profitable sense, and that's the way we've always tried to work is: Does it really add value so it's not growth for growth's sake? It's quality growth. A lot of effort's put around here to say: Where does this take us? It's a high-class problem to have to look at those three, but it's really nice to have the flexibility that we can do any of the three or any part of the three and still raise the value of Matador.
San Mateo, I don't want San Mateo left out because they've not only contributed to the EBITDA, to the cash flow, but the operational advantages that we've had when our guys were turning on the Rodney Robinson or the Boros wells, if it was an outside midstream company, they might not have been as responsive and be there waiting for us when Chris and Cliff had those completed wells, and they had them ready to turn on. We're really glad that Greg joined us, and Matt Spicer joined us, and they've really pushed the midstream ahead, and Matt Hairford and James. It's all integral, and one hand has really helped wash the other.
Yeah. Joe, just want to add to that, just specifically on that EE E pipeline, which is what we call the gas trunk line that runs from the Black River plant there in the Rustler Breaks area down to Stateline. We had the permitting in process. A lot of that was BLM, a lot of it was state, a lot of it was fee. COVID happened, people quit coming to work, I'm almost certain that the San Mateo folks got it done when a lot of people wouldn't have. They went above and beyond, they climbed mountains to get people to come to work and approve permits. We put two crews to work, which got it done, got it done just in time.
Otherwise, I think we'd have been sitting there for weeks, if not months, with wells drilled and completed and waiting to produce. It was a Herculean effort by the San Mateo team.
Yeah. No, would agree, Matt, and Joe, interesting to hear your perspective on all three. Matt, just really love to hear your opinion, given you guys are such big holders. My last question is just on undrilled inventory. In broader terms, how you guys think about Tier 1 locations left in key areas like Stateline, Rustler Breaks, and others. Thank you, guys.
Thanks, Neal. Also, it's true that we are big owners, and that has a definite influence with our stock ownership. We made a lot more from the stock going up. When I say we, the whole executive group, but especially Matt and David and Billy, and us by the stock going up $1 or $2, than we do from our salary compensation. That's an important part of our culture. We expect the other staff to be buying staff stock and being interested in that. We're pleased during the worst times of last year when the price war and the pandemic were going, and our stock was challenged more, we had over 200 other staff get out there and buy stock during that time. I think the interest is paying off this year.
Tell me that again, I got so interested.
The inventory.
Oh, the inventory. As David, we made sure I got so interested in talking about the stock.
I'm glad you did, Joe.
The inventory looks really good. One thing that's helped it is all those different zones that Ned talked about. We believe we have 1,000 or more A+ locations, and that's what a lot of this business has come down to, is how many A+ locations. We define that is, it's kind of dated now, but that was what would give you a 15% rate of return at $35 a barrel. Well, we're above that, but we really haven't added to those locations or redone the numbers on it. We've got plenty of locations. We drilled last year, 49, 48 wells, so let's call it 50. We think we've still got a 20-year inventory on A+ locations.
One of our shareholders really emphasized in our meetings, well, that's why we say we like getting out and talking to them, and he put his finger right on it. In today's world, how many of those A+ locations have you got? If you don't have plenty for years ahead, you're going to struggle at some time. We're trying to stay ahead of the drilling curve on that, and touch wood, it's working right now. We're confident that we're building the depth of staff to keep that going, and we like our chances.
Thanks, guys. Great answer, Joe.
Thanks, Neal.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of John Freeman of Raymond James. Your line is now open.
Good morning, guys.
Hey, John.
Hey, John.
Congrats on another great quarter. Just following up on Scott’s earlier questions on the cost side. I guess this is a little bit of a loaded question, but it just looks like you all are so far ahead of the game here. Obviously, the CapEx came in 11% below you all’s expectations this quarter. You’ve already had 40% of your wells for the year that have been turned to sales at $657 a foot. When I look at the original guidance of $730 a foot for the year, it looks like, on those remaining wells that you all have for the year, you’d be expecting them to be up about 20% on a per foot basis. I realize you all had some 10% service cost inflation in the back half of the year, that explains some of it.
Just if there's anything else that we should think about, in terms of what goes into those cost assumptions. It just looks like you all are just doing a phenomenal job on the efficiency side, and maybe it's just as simple as you all want to wait for another, those initial four greater Stebbins wells this summer to come online, and then maybe you evaluate where you are at that point on a CapEx trends. Just anything on that front, please.
Yeah, John, this is Matt. I'll answer part of the question. I'm sure David will have some comments, too. You're right. We do assume the 10% increase in costs. We're starting to see a little bit of that. Probably the biggest thing to talk about would be the cost of sand, regional sand that we're buying from the mines there in Texas. We've seen a pretty good jump, up to 40%, in the price of the sand. I think there's two components to that. Number one is just supply and demand. The rig count went down, and the mines reduced their production. I think they have the capability to increase that and probably help with some there, and they probably will at some point in time. The other is the cost to get that sand to location, which is directly related to fuel prices.
The price of crude is up, and so diesel's up, and that's not necessarily a bad thing for us. We also think that, just on the horsepower side of things, that the pressure pumping folks are probably going to be looking for some sort of increase in the future, and so we've built that in, too. To your point, too, about the wells up in the Stebbins area and the Ranger Arrowhead areas, those wells, a lot of those will require an extra string of casing due to the aquifer up there. Those wells are inherently a little more expensive to drill. The ones that we've drilled so far actually have been under what we've budgeted, so we're doing well there, but that would account for some of the discrepancy in the cost that you're looking at.
Yeah. I think, John, this is David. A number of those wells are new pads, too, so their costs are going to be a little bit higher. I do think it's just a little early in the year to jump out there. Very happy with how the cost came in in the first quarter. Even some of that, we will probably push into the second quarter because we did have some timing issues there, too. Not so much on our side, but some of the non-op stuff was a little slower than we predicted in the first quarter. We looked at it. We're very pleased where we are and think things are looking good, but also think that we've got the range pegged pretty well for right now. Probably need another quarter to look at it before we consider making any kind of changes.
Yeah, John, this is Matt again. I just want to clarify one thing I said on that 40% increase in the proppant cost. That ends up being about 6% or 7% of the completion cost, which ends up being 2% or 3% of the AFE cost. It's not terribly impactful.
No, that's really helpful. Maybe just my follow-up, David, on what you started to mention on the non-op side, maybe coming a little bit slower. The other part I was going to ask about was if, given the price we've seen in the commodity, if you were seeing anything on the non-op side that would cause you all to think that possibly there might be some upward bias on the original non-op wells that you all had planned in the budget. I think you had seven net wells planned in the budget. If you're just seeing anything on that front, either from an activity side or maybe how the costs were sort of trending on the non-op side.
Right now, John, I don't know that we think we're going to have a lot of additional non-op for the year. There were a few wells, four or five or so in the first quarter that I think we thought would get completed to turn to sales that the partner for some reason just didn't quite get there. We know those are being completed. We know they're going to come on. I think in terms of the total amount of activity, maybe seeing a tiny uptick, but not too much. I think right now we feel pretty good about where that number is. It's just, like I say, just a few of them kind of slid back a little bit. I still think we expect to see that.
On the cost side, I think that the costing to still be coming in at or better than what we were anticipating. That helped a little bit too in the first quarter.
I appreciate it. Thanks, guys.
Thanks, John.
Thank you. As a reminder to ask a question, you will need to press star then one on your telephone. Our next question comes from the line of Gabe Daoud with Cowen. Your line is now open.
Maybe just starting with the permitting process. Obviously, it's resumed since the moratorium. It looks like you received another nine since the last update. Could you just maybe shed some color on how the process has changed, if at all, if it's elongated a bit, or if it's still relatively business as usual?
Yeah. Hi, Gabe. It's David. Well, as we reported, since the pause was lifted about a month ago now, the authority has returned to the local office, in this case, Carlsbad, for us, to approve permits and sundries and right of way and the like. We're pleased to see that we've gotten nine new permits, through the kind of over the go line and through the system. The staff's been very cooperative to get a number of sundries that we needed to support ongoing wells that we were drilling. I think we're optimistic and pleased to see things opening back up a little bit. I do think we're still cautious to sort of see if there's going to be a little more friction in the system going forward and how that may impact things going forward. Certainly it was encouraging news to see nine new permits come across.
I think we're optimistic that we'll continue to get them. We're still cautious. We're still watching to see. I don't know that we can say the process has fully returned to normal as yet, but hopefully it'll move in that direction.
Got you. Thanks, David. Then maybe just a follow-up, just hitting on activity levels moving forward. Obviously, you added the fourth rig in March. Could you, David, or even Joe, I guess, just help us think about the correct pace for Matador moving throughout 2021 and into 2022? I know you'll be drilling through a significant portion of the higher working interest inventory, so just trying to get a sense of if you would need to add an additional rig to backfill the loss of those high working interest locations. Thanks, guys.
Well, I'll try, David, and then you.
Yes, that'd be great.
clean up. Gabe, that's a multivariable type question about when we might add another rig. There's no immediate plans to do so. We're going to watch how costs come in. We're going to watch how the revenues come in. We're going to watch how the opportunities come in. We're going to watch how the federals act on their pace of approving permits and sundries and the like. There's all those things go into that. We just got the rig 30 days ago, we got to see how that might work out. That's one reason why we were pleased. We've already been through our loan committees on our bank loan, we have plenty of cash flow right now, that's the advantage of having a line of credit.
I'm real pleased that we have 13 member banks in our credit group, and they unanimously approved our loan, as it were. No changes. We've got their full confidence. Right now, we plan to keep the plan as we have it and let a little more time go by before making changes. It's the right pace right now. We could ramp it up, but we want to also get the debt down. That's our first priority, and then the second one is paying the dividend, and the third is we're going to have growth. We got a great opportunity set. We can afford to be patient. Most of our federal acreage is now HBP, I think something like 78%. That becomes optional after that, and the rest of the federal acreage, for the most part, overwhelmingly, has eight years to run.
That's a lot of option time. We can look at different strategies, but we think we have good cards to play. David?
I think the only thing I would add, Joe, just to clarify your question about the high working interest, Gabe. It is true that as we get closer to drilling the locations or finishing up drilling on Stateline or Rodney Robinson, that those are some of the higher working interest wells that we're drilling currently. We've still got a good ways to go. It'll probably be the end of next year, perhaps, before we've been making many changes, certainly late in the year. It's going to take us a while even to work through those locations. Should, as Joe say, we decide to back off on some of those and move to some other areas, I think that before what you're talking about kicks in terms of maintaining the same level, even of capital intensity, we're still a ways from that happening.
Understood. Thanks for clarifying that, guys, and good quarter.
Thank you.
Hey, thanks, Gabe.
Thank you. Our last question is from Gail Nicholson of Stephens. Your line is now open.
Good morning. I believe this quarter set a record for first quarter LOE despite the storm in February. Can you talk about what drove the LOE performance in the quarter, and what was the impact on the LOE from the storm?
Sure, Gail, this is Matt. I think the answer to your question is effort. Our guys, every summer, we start getting ready in July and August, which sounds kind of weird when it's 105 degrees that you start preparing for winter, but we do. That's not only on the Matador E&P side, but that's also San Mateo for the saltwater gathering and.
Saltwater gathering and disposal and the oil transportation and the gas processing and gathering. It starts early. That helps a little bit. I think just driving costs down, Glenn and his team, they've got 98% of the water that we produce is on pipe. They get 78% of the oil that we produce is on pipe. That all helps from a cost perspective, just getting out in front of things and making things work. This Winter Storm Uri, we took a different approach than I think a lot of other operators did. Our guys, and Joe said this before, they went to the grocery store, they packed a bunch of groceries, and they got in their trucks. The one thing I'll disagree with him, he said they slept in their trucks, but I don't think they slept a whole lot, Joe.
They were out there working, and they were in constant communication with the San Mateo folks, who were doing the same thing. They're out making this gas plant run. Our marketing team here in Dallas, they found a home, found places to sell the gas, and manipulated the markets to make sure that. They didn't manipulate the markets.
The sound of that, Gail, was me kicking you under the table.
They were able to watch the market to make sure that we got our nominations right and got our product sold. True effort for the team. What I've been saying, Gail, it's the best first quarter we've ever had with the worst weather conditions we've ever had. I think hats off to the entire team.
Great. Then on the San Mateo side, San Mateo's generating free cash flow. We should see EBITDA growth throughout 2021. Can you just talk about what are the growth drivers for San Mateo in 2022 forward? Then what is San Mateo's plan regarding the future repayment of its credit facility?
Well, I think the key growth drivers for San Mateo going forward, I'd say are two specific ones. Number one, the growth in Matador volumes in both the Stateline and the Stebbins area is expected to be significant over the next couple of years, 2021 and 2022. That certainly will drive higher volumes and higher revenues and cash flows for San Mateo. Also, we have a continuing and ongoing effort to increase third-party volumes at San Mateo, and I expect that we will continue to add third parties as well. I would say those are the two primary drivers. I think I'd also just throw in the fact that I think those guys have also done, the San Mateo team, a very nice job of reducing operating costs over the last several quarters. That's also contributed to better free cash flow from San Mateo.
I think all that's good. With regard to the San Mateo credit facility, we did repay $19 million since April 1st , so that paid that down a little bit. I don't think at the moment we're as concerned with rapidly repaying the credit facility there. I think what we're more focused on is given the merger of San Mateo II into San Mateo I and the additional collateral, we are looking to sort of expand the credit facility, and that's probably something that we'll take on as an objective here pretty quickly, Gail, and maybe look to have a little bit better commitment in terms of elected commitment and just improve the size of the facility in the event that we need that going forward.
Great. Thank you so much. Great quarter, guys.
Hey, thanks, Gail.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the Q&A portion of this morning's conference call. I'd like to turn the call over to management for any closing remarks.
Thank you, Sarah. Really, I thought you all did good on the questions, and we appreciate the substantive nature of the questions, and we appreciate your following us, and we feel very optimistic. Glad to see the whole staff top to bottom contributing to the effort in a material way, and we like the innovation. We didn't get into that, but there have been some great innovations done on the technical side. The rig design that Billy and his group came up with has paid off, and I'd note that, by way of substance on that, the fourth rig was a state-of-the-art rig that the other ones were and is already off to a real good start. That has worked well. The same thing on the fracking. The guys come up with new fracking techniques, and the plants are running well.
As sure as I say that, some will happen this afternoon. Everything is working, and it's been a great effort by the staff to work through these challenges, and we feel we've come out of the challenges much stronger than when we went in. It's a year ago, almost exactly, our stock had fallen down to a $1, and then this time was about a $3, and nobody quit, nobody despaired. They just kept moving through, and it's rallied. I'm delighted that, get the bank approval. We appreciate them standing with us because last year they renewed it, no changes, the 13 different credit committees and 13 different reservoir groups, they did it again this spring.
Shareholder group, everybody, we just want everybody to know how much we appreciate it, and we see the outlook is very strong, and I think that'll just generate more opportunities for us. We'll sign off, and once again, invite any of you to come see us as the nation opens up again. We'd love to have you come by and meet more of our staff and have a longer visit.
I guess particularly on June 4th at the annual shareholders meeting, huh?
Thank you, David, for kicking me under the table with the Yes, we have our annual meeting June 4th. We've sent out the annual report, and we really hope you'll come, and we'll get back to normal again. Thanks a lot. Come see us.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation today. This concludes the program. You may now disconnect.