Thank you for joining today's Fireside Chat with Ring Energy senior leadership team. We're joined today by Chairman and CEO, Paul McKinney, COO, Alexander Dyes, Chief Exploration Officer, James J. Parr, and CFO, Sonu Johl. I am Jeff Robertson, Managing Director – Natural Resources here at Water Tower Research. Before we begin, I would like to remind participants that today's discussion could include forward-looking statements as of today, May 20, 2026. Ring's disclosures regarding forward-looking statements can be found under the investor relations tab of its corporate homepage. We may refer to slides from Ring's latest investor deck, which can also be found under the investor relations tab of the company's homepage. With that housekeeping out of the way, Alexander, Paul, James J. and Sonu, thank you for joining us today.
No, thank you for having us. We really enjoy the opportunity to get our word out.
Ring is an exploration production company whose assets are concentrated on the Northwest Shelf and Central Basin Platform areas of the Permian Basin, where reservoir targets primarily consist of multiple stacked formations with known hydrocarbons. Ring and offset operators are turning to horizontal drilling to extract greater value from some of the producing reservoirs. First quarter 2026 production averaged about 19,350 BOE per day, of which 63% was oil, and Ring's Adjusted EBITDA was $38.3 million. A secondary equity offering of 44.4 million shares was priced on May 12, 2026, raising gross proceeds of approximately $60 million. Paul, I know we're going to come back to this a little bit later, but I would just like to start in light of the equity offering. Can you just share your rationale behind the offering and how the proceeds accelerate Ring's deleveraging goals?
Yeah. That's obviously the elephant in the room, right? A lot of the shareholders are still questioning the rationale behind this. Before we get into the rationale, let's take just a step back and put all of this into context. If you remember, when we joined Ring Energy in the fourth quarter of 2020, Ring Energy's two biggest challenges, the biggest one was our leverage. We had a balance sheet that was very over-levered, or at the time that I joined, of course, that was mid-period, four times. At the end of that period, we're still 3.6x levered. The other thing was size and scale. What size and scale is necessary to be relevant in the marketplace? There is an argument to be had as to which of these two are more important.
I don't really want to waste a lot of time on that, to kind of give you an indication where I fall, debt has risks that size and scale doesn't, okay? At a $75 oil environment, we could do both. We could grow our production, and we could also continue to strengthen and improve the balance sheet by paying down debt. At $70 or below $70, we cannot do that. When prices became tough, we focused on the balance sheet. Here we are today. Even though we are in a higher price environment where we can do both, our two biggest challenges are still size and scale and balance sheet. Now, we're in a higher oil price environment. We believe that these higher prices are probably likely to be here for longer than what the market is currently implying.
Our leverage ratio at the end of the first quarter was still 2.4x . Without the record equity raise, we could have continued to reduce debt meaningfully, and we would throughout the rest of this year, paying down debt with the higher cash flow with these higher prices. That is a very slow process, even at these higher prices, and our balance sheet would still prevent us from taking advantage of the opportunities that we believe that this price cycle is going to provide. Depending on that course of action also depends on a strategy of hope. We believe prices are going to be higher for longer, but there's no guarantee that they're going to be.
Today is kind of a good environment of the cyclical nature and how this market responds to the progress and the things that are going on that are beyond our control in the Middle East. We needed to position the company to take advantage of the options that we believe this price cycle is likely going to provide. The rationale was really simple. We're accelerating value through balance sheet strength. We executed the equity offering from a position of strength, not necessity. We took advantage of a constructive market window to strengthen the balance sheet sooner, reduce debt faster, lower interest expense, and give the company more flexibility in a volatile commodity environment.
We accelerated our debt plans by over a full year, better positioning the company to take advantage of the opportunities this price cycle are likely going to present, especially when you consider the virtues of our 2026 capital program. We're going to get into that a little bit later on. We recognize that issuing equity does create near-term dilution to our shareholders, but we're also shareholders, and so we don't take that lightly. We do believe the trade-off makes sense, especially in light of the opportunities that are in front of us. We believe that the near-term dilution in exchange for a stronger company, lower financial risk, more flexibility to execute the plan that's in front of us or may be in front of us, we believe that's real important.
We will partially overcome the dilution for this deal with close to $5 million of lower interest expense, which is a compounding virtue, by the way. Companies with lower leverage ratio trade at a higher multiple. Importantly, this is not a change in our strategy, especially when it comes to regarding our balance sheet. It's basically an acceleration of it. Debt reduction remains a core priority. Capital discipline remains a core priority. What this transaction does, it allows us to pursue those objectives more efficiently, while also giving us the flexibility to invest in higher return opportunities across our asset base. Those opportunities include extending laterals, investing in water handling. If you look at the 2026 program that we were so anxious to protect earlier in this year by raising our floors and layering in hedges to protect our cash flows.
This capital program really has the opportunity to increase our capital efficiency going forward, and set this company up for organic growth that does not depend on acquisitions. That's significant because most of the peers that we compete with out there in the marketplace, other people or other companies you can invest in, they grow basically through A&D. We've got more than one tool in the toolbox, so to speak. We're going to talk more about that when I turn it over to James. Reducing debt sooner reduces risk. It gives us more flexibility through the commodity cycles and helps make future cash flow more durable. As long-term shareholders ourselves, we believe that this is the right outcome for our shareholders.
Your point about growing or the organic growth in the asset base, Ring has built its foundation on conventional assets in the Permian Basin. Why do you target those types of assets to build a sustainable production profile and one that you can support organic growth as you progress toward your leverage reduction goals?
Yeah. Well, we focus on conventional oil-weighted assets because they give us the durability and strong margins with a decline profile that supports long-term free cash flow. That's the bottom line. The conventional zones we target also have lower drilling breakevens with competitive high returns. The entry costs for this strategy are still lower when compared to the unconventional shale opportunities that others are pursuing. That's really important.
One thing I wanted to touch on was acquisitions, which have played a big role in Ring's growth over the last number of years. Acquisitions bring free cash flow because you target producing properties, but they also bring development opportunities. Does the market for conventional assets, either in the areas that Ring would look, does it differ very much from the market for unconventional assets in the Permian?
Yes, they are different. They still remain different. I don't know how long they will be different. As I observe transactions out there in the marketplace, people are paying considerable valuations for these shales still. The entry costs for unconventional assets like what we're pursuing, they're lower. That allows us still to be more competitive, generate higher returns on the acquisitions we make. If you pay through the nose for something, what's left over when you're done is you better have bought a lot of it because you're going to be like the Walmart version. You'll make smaller margins on a larger resource base. The entry costs for us are getting more competitive as time goes on. We do believe there's opportunities out there.
If you look back on our history, in the past, most of the deals we pursued, they were initiated through negotiations. They were not assets that were out there on the marketplace at the time. They came through negotiations. Now, one of them, the Stronghold deal, it turned into a process, and we ultimately succeeded in that. The Founders and the Lime Rock deals, both of those were negotiated deals. We like that. We believe that there's opportunities out there. The bottom line is, our balance sheet today is not in the position so that we can take advantage of those. Let me back up. The balance sheet today is in much better shape, and it's going to be even better by the end of this year. Without this equity deal, we would still be essentially out of the market for pursuing opportunities.
If an opportunity does present itself out there that is accretive to the shareholders and it fits our strategy and our growth plans, with a balance sheet of 2.4x, it's really tough to be competitive in that environment.
Alex, let's talk a little bit about operations. Ring has a history of drilling horizontal wells up on the Northwest Shelf, targeting the San Andrés formation. Pardon me. You've shown good progress increasing drilling efficiency on the existing asset base. With the stacked nature of the reservoirs that you have in the Central Basin Platform and the Northwest Shelf, can you talk about what's really driven the drilling efficiency gains that the company has posted?
Yes, absolutely. Just first of all, thank you, Jeff, for hosting us, and we're excited to share with you and with our investors just what's really happening in the transition. Let's take a step back before we go into capital gains and efficiencies, and just talk about what's really happened over the last decade. There's been a big transition, obviously, in the basins. There's the shale revolution, big, longer horizontals in both the Delaware and the Midland Basin. For us since 2015, in both the CDP and Northwest Shelf, over 1,200 horizontal wells have been drilled. Of those, Ring has been a part of about 30% of those over that last 10 years or so. What's really happened today and why now? Why does it really work today? Over that time, there's been tons of horizontal technology improvements. You're drilling longer laterals.
We're staying in zone. We're actually optimizing the landing zones, and we've figured that out even just on our core acreage, and we'll get to talking about more of where we're taking things into some of these newer benches. Two, there's optimized fracs, and again, the longer extended laterals in our benches has really transformed things. I think that that's really what's led to a lot of the efficiencies today. If you look at our deck on page 17, we actually talk about that, where we show our cost per lateral foot used to be well above $550 per foot. Now in 2025, we're around $500 a foot. How did we do that? Well, again, drilling longer laterals, pad, multi-pad development, and optimizing the fracs. That's really where we're seeing the gains.
As we talked on our Q1 earnings deck, we actually have a 15% reduction on spud to TD. How did we gain that as of recently? Again, it's just the culture of the drilling department, always non-stop, relentless, trying to find efficiencies, and we just optimized the BHA as we were drilling some of these horizontals and reduced the days by 15%. Those are just some examples.
Alex, as you look at bringing other zones into the capital program, should those kind of gains that you outlined be repeatable?
Absolutely. Again, I go back to just talking about, look at the gains we had in our San Andrés play over the years. We've got over 300 horizontals there. We saw nice gains there. The Yoakum San Andrés is different than the Andrews San Andrés. Well, not only have we seen gains on our own acreage, just right offset to our acreage, and we'll talk about CBP South, which is Crane and Ector. Offset operators have drilled over 200 horizontals recently, and actually 100 horizontals alone within one or two miles of our acreage. They've proved efficiencies, thus we're trying to apply all the knowledge we've learned before from ours and also the offset operators. We definitely believe that as we do multilaterals, co-development, and longer laterals, it'll really drive that efficiency.
To your point about the graphs on slide 17, should we also then expect that, or should investors expect that the amount of production that you're able to add per capital dollar invested will grow as you transition some of these targets to horizontal zones?
Yes. That is the goal. The caveat is obviously, as we talked in the earnings deck and Paul just mentioned, we are having to invest into infrastructure, right? We've been doing that in our San Andrés plays, both in Yoakum and Andrews. As we transition, and we'll talk more about CBP South, we've been investing, but there's multiple areas. Just to give you kind of order of magnitude there, of our 90,000+ acres, our CBP South area is about 1/3 of it. Yes, we've invested in some of the dollars there, and so that will help transition these longer laterals, more capital efficiency. There is an investment up front.
However, over the last two to three years, not only is it that infrastructure investment that's leading to more barrels per capital spent, essentially, but also we've been quietly actually spending a lot of leasing dollars. We've been able to benefit that in some of our plays up to the north. Now we're currently going to benefit in our plays to the south. That also helps. All that investment helps create that capital efficiency. To kind of talk in layman's terms, let's just take, okay, we have two sections. We used to develop those CBP South vertically. Those two sections developed at 20 acre spacing, was well over 60 vertical wells. Right? Today, if you take three or four benches that we've proved on that same two sections, well, now you're drilling half the wells horizontally.
You're getting more production out of each well, yet you don't have the locations, the artificial lift equipment, the wellheads, just because you cut really your total well count by half.
The infrastructure and everything else. That's exactly right.
Yeah. That's really what it is.
Alexander Dyes, as you look at horizontal wells and the production profile of those types of wells versus some of these zones that you alluded to that might have been traditionally drilled in vertical wells, would a greater horizontal component of Ring Energy's production have an impact on the production profile of the overall company?
Well, let's first just start getting a little bit educational because everyone's gotten used to the shale revolution and the shale type production profiles. Our PDP base is 20% decline or so. Yes, as we transition to these horizontals, what's going to require less wells to add to the mix to basically maintain or slightly grow our production as we've been doing in years past. Overall, you're getting more PV10, more oil out of the horizontals. Our cash flow profile essentially is becoming more sustainable over time. That's what investors have to look forward to as we're transitioning from vertical to horizontal drilling.
Yeah. Cash flow can also be generated by higher margins through lower operating costs. Alexander Dyes, you and the team have shown pretty good ability to lower operating costs out in the field. Can you share some specifics on what's been behind that? Are there any real structural areas that you target over the next year or two, and as you look at horizontal drilling, that you think also could continue to structurally improve the cost structure?
Yes, absolutely. First of all, let's take a step back on structurally, we've been able to lower the cost over the last few years. We actually have a track record of that. If you go to page 22 of our Q1's earning deck, it really shows that track record. Not only have we reduced LOE, we've reduced our all-in cash cost on a dollar per BOE basis year-over-year. Why we're excited for 2026 and beyond, because of all the things we just discussed, we look forward to continuing that momentum. You asked a little bit about examples and just what have we done. Let's just talk holistic numbers. On page 17, we actually talk about what happened from 2024 to 2025. We also talked about, or you asked Paul a little bit earlier ago about some of the acquisitions.
Well, in 2025 we had the Lime Rock acquisition. If you compare 2024 to 2025 on an LOE standpoint, we had a $1.4 million a month in savings from 2024 to 2025. If you compare Lime Rock and Ring Legacy versus our current asset base with Lime Rock on top of that now in 2025. In addition, we've been able to continuously reduce the structural cost, and that's really because it's a mindset, it's a culture. We have not a short-term type culture, we have a long-term built to last type culture. In Q1, if you heard our earnings call, we actually took those savings from $1.4 million-$1.7 million a month in savings or about a $2 per BOE basis. We've been able to reduce that. Just how do we do that?
Always looking at how to optimize and reduce your well failures, optimize your chemical program, build in some automation to reroute some of the pumper routes, just those kind of things. It has a compounding effect over time.
James, let's turn to you and talk a little about Ring's organic growth potential. As we talked a little bit earlier, producing property acquisitions have been an important role in building the asset base over the years. As Alexander Dyes alluded to, from a leasing standpoint, if you want to grow in the Permian Basin, largely it comes by trying to bolt on neighboring acreage. But vertical wells have dominated the Northwest Shelf and Central Basin Platform for about 100 years. What do you think are the economic implications as you shift to more horizontal drilling, and which formations in the asset base might be the most amenable to more modern drilling and stimulation techniques?
Well, first of all, thanks again for hosting us today, Jeff Robertson. We really appreciate the opportunity, as the guys have said, to tell our story. It's a great question because where we're focused on the Central Basin Platform and the Northwest Shelf is the historic heart of the Permian Basin. Originally, probably for the first 80 years of that exploration and development, the Central Basin Platform was the main event, and the Northwest Shelf, with the world being a vertical, exploiting conventional resources. If you look at the map on slide 5 of our investor deck, it shows the production on the Central Basin Platform and the adjacent shale basins in the Delaware and the Midland to the east and the west.
With the advent of horizontal wells, with George Mitchell exploiting the Barnett and the explosion in horizontal activity for the last 20 years, the industry has migrated away from conventional assets into unconventional shale plays in the basins. Leaving these conventional assets, I'll say, largely abandoned or not the current focus of most of the companies. We're looking at them from the opportunity set as being a great target because conventional rock has much better reservoir properties. Our idea and our investment thesis is to apply horizontal technology, the development, the methodology that's been developed and exploiting the shales for these last 20 years, and convert what has largely been a vertical area into a horizontal development. The bottom line to that is we have greater access to the rock, greater reservoir contact, and improved recoveries.
As Alexander Dyes has said, for a dollar spent, we have more barrels. The capital efficiency, we get more production with fewer wells and create great present value for the company. That shift to the horizontals has largely been stepwise for us because we're always focused on the maximum returns. We've been targeting the main historic reservoir on the Central Basin Platform has been at San Andrés, and we've been exploiting that efficiently in four main areas, as you can see on our investor deck. From the activity of our vertical stack and fracs and the drilling of the neighbors, and you can see that explosion of activity on some of the maps in our deck.
We now have a multi-bench opportunity set to include not just the San Andrés and its various sub-formations, the Judkins and the McKnight, but the deeper potential, the Glorieta, the Clear Fork, Tubb, Wichita Albany, Wolfcamp. The neighbors are even exploiting even deeper potential in the Barnett, the Woodford, and the Devonian. That really expands our opportunity set, our portfolio. We're doing it pretty disciplined because we're always focused on returns. We're looking for the rocks which have the best reservoir quality, the best thickness, and the right pressure and fluid characteristics that give us the maximum return. Our program for 2026 and 2027 is focused on that, and we're developing increased understanding of these reservoirs and how would they respond. We'll have a lot of good, exciting things to tell you as the year goes on, both this year and early next year.
We're excited by using horizontal technology in the formations and areas that we're present, that we've acquired from the acquisitions that we've made. As Alexander Dyes says, we continue to learn and bolt on organically to those positions to expand our footprint, to drill longer laterals and be even more productive and capital efficient.
Am I understanding correctly, James? At basically Ring's asset base and the properties that you acquired, you've been able to expand the organic growth potential of those assets by considering horizontal drilling in some of these stacked reservoirs, and probably none of which was factored into the acquisition evaluation and the consideration that was paid. It's essentially upside beyond, and ultimately enhances the return on how that capital was deployed. Is that reasonable?
Absolutely. That's been really interesting. The Permian is a very highly contested, competitive area. Through the acquisitions, which were done mostly for the PDP and the opportunity set in the San Andrés, with these being old established areas, they have lease rights to access the deeper potential. We've been exploring those and exploiting those, first with vertical frac stacks in the south central part of the area in Crane and Ector County. We know from the production from those vertical wells, from the tracer data, that these additional targets, which weren't factored into the original acquisitions, they're now looking attractive, and we're testing those horizons with our program. This is an opportunity set.
It's exploring in the acreage we already own and is in our core areas to share in the infrastructure gains that Alexander Dyes and Paul McKinney have said in terms of water handling, roads, power, gas takeaway. It's a very efficient way of exploiting these deeper potentials that weren't factored into the original acquisition.
If I may add something there, James. Actually, when we were evaluating two of those three acquisitions we've done over the last few years, one, we paid, like James said, just really PDP and got the upside for essentially free. The other big part of that is that a lot of those acquisitions were in the hands of majors, and a lot of those leases were done way back 50+ years ago, so they held all depths and they're high nets. That's a really big difference maker. Most of our CBP South area has higher nets, and so it really boosts your economics moving forward.
Yeah.
Higher net revenue interest to give Ring a greater share of the production revenue coming off the lease, right, Alex?
That's exactly right.
Yep.
James, last year after Ring acquired the Lime Rock assets, when oil prices weakened in the second quarter, CapEx was lowered since you had the production. If you think about an activity level, has the pace of activity or maybe a little bit reduced pace of activity given your exploration teams greater time to mature the ideas and develop where you might want to test some of these other zones in the future when you start looking at some of the slides like you have on slide 8, where you show kind of the layer cake in the Central Basin Platform?
Absolutely. It's interesting. It's been the tale of two years. We had Liberation Day last year, which took the air out of the oil prices, and we weren't sure how low it would go and how long it would be, and we were told by IEA and lots of other places that there'd be a surplus. We reduced our capital spending program to continue to pay down our debt, which we did, and to, I guess, generate free cash flow, which we've done for 26 quarters. Just because at that time, we limited the capital spend, but we kept our staff intact and thinking never stops.
It gave us the bandwidth to then look at our data, both from our data sets and the neighbors, and look for when the world turned, which we didn't expect, but it turned on February 28th and prices come up, that with increased oil prices, we have the benefit of potentially being able to test these deeper zones that we've had that period of time to assess which ones have the most potential, where should we do them? As Alexander Dyes said, where should we, if you like, pre-invest in the infrastructure, the power, the water, in order to test these zones, get them online, and determine their ultimate economics. We didn't waste the time. We used it wisely to construct where would we come out when the world turned and oil prices came up. That's been a lesson.
Having an exploration mindset never ends. The amount of budget you have to spend varies with oil price, we're very conscious of that. We're very encouraged by what we've seen in our portfolio and look forward to targeting it in the coming months.
If you don't mind me jumping in there, James, and to put a little bit more color to your question, Jeff. Yes, when Liberation Day occurred, we cut back capital substantially, as you know. We did that in preference of paying down debt and protecting the balance sheet, reducing risk for the shareholders. Yes, it did prevent us from testing some of these zones. We tested a few zones last year, and we got started on this, but we would've spent more capital testing these zones, and we'd be farther along than where we are today.
If you look at the work that the geoscience guys and all the engineering team that works for Alex, those guys, and the land teams out there as well, they've been working really well together, identifying similar opportunities in the playground where we are, up and down the Central Basin Platform, the Northwest Shelf. There's a lot of opportunities out there. We probably would be a little farther along had Liberation Day not occurred. Hey, it is what it is. We are where we are. I'm really proud of what the teams have done. The geoscience engineering land teams have done a great job of identifying opportunities. There's a lot out there for us to continue to pursue in the very sandbox that we're playing today.
Well, I think with the capital that you did deploy last year and maybe leading into 2025, the wells that you drilled and the projects that you undertook actually performed well versus expectations, and that supported Ring's production in the back half of the year. Isn't that the right way to think about it?
Absolutely. We focused last year on the highest return opportunities. We did sprinkle in some of these tests because we wanted to start the process of converting to horizontals and get some experience under our belt. It was a very successful year. All of the tests, even though we haven't really talked about those yet, because we're not ready to do that yet, we want to have some repeatabilities or we're testing some of these zones again this year. All of the results we have from last year were extremely encouraging, let's just say it that way.
Yeah. To add to that, Paul, actually, it's on slide 17 in our IR deck, where you can see.
Yeah.
For 2023 and 2024 that of all the horizontals together, our well performance has increased over time. Yeah, we're definitely excited.
Yep.
Alex or James, when Paul and the board come to you and say, "We need to construct a development program for the coming year," you have a big inventory with a wide variety of projects to look at that have different economics and different business cycles. How do you prioritize which projects rise to the top and get funded in a budget process?
It's an iterative process, and that's a great question because we have a broad portfolio, which gives us a lot of opportunity, and we really try and take advantage of the competitive infrastructure and pre-investments that we've made to maximize the returns. That gets the party started while we assess other areas. It's one of these, they all have their own different pace, and they all have their own different outcome and all have their own characteristics. We focus on the highest return projects, and we invest across the portfolio. The plans and the outcomes don't always coincide, so it's good to have a portfolio of opportunities, and we're able to capitalize on that breadth and utilize the infrastructure that we've had, which is a key component of exploiting what we've got beneath us.
Now, let's talk about some of the finances. When Ring reported its first quarter numbers, I guess two weeks ago now, full year production costs and CapEx guidance was reaffirmed with the guidance that was put out in early March. Pardon me. Paul touched on the recent equity offering. Can you just fill in any details regarding how the proceeds fit in the company's debt reduction and CapEx profile for 2026?
Yeah, Jeff, and this is a really important question, and I think really important for our listeners to understand, and our shareholders to really understand what the use of proceeds are for this transaction. Our priority for the proceeds raised is really to strengthen our balance sheet, and with a clear focus to paying down the borrowings on our credit facilities. It's absolutely going to reduce leverage. It's going to take us to a position where to the end of this year, we were going to end somewhere at two times leverage if we ran a $75 oil case. To where pro forma for this deal, we're going to be well below 1.7. If you start thinking about the run rate of our business, and you think about where we are in Q4 annualize, our pro forma leverage for this deal will be close to 1.5x .
It dramatically changes the debt profile of this business on a go-forward basis. As you think about our capital budget, the use of the proceeds wasn't intended to change our development program. It absolutely was used to strengthen our company Ring and just provide us more optionality. As you think about 2027, the consensus figures, there's a lot of noise, I would say, in those figures, and this gives us a lot more optionality how we think about 2027 and our free cash flow generation.
Paul mentioned the compounding impact on cash flow with reducing the interest cost associated with $60 million of RBL principal. Is the right way to think about that it increases free cash flow and therefore increases the ability to pay down debt at a faster rate than what you could have done without issuing that equity?
Absolutely. Almost dollar for dollar, every dollar we put in, there's less interest that we're having to pay on that debt that we're paying down. With the proceeds raised, it's close to $5 million in interest savings that we're going to have annually, when you can imagine the compounding effect of that year in and year out.
How will the offering proceeds affect the RBL availability in a, as you look at your next redetermination? Not to get ahead of the banks, also, will the leverage ratio going declining have any impact on how Ring thinks about hedging?
I think taking that's kind of a multiple part question there. I think the bank meeting is an important kind of fact. I think it's also important to note our relationship with our banking group is extremely strong. These are banks that have been supportive, have been with us for a number of years. I don't want people to associate the equity offering for some rationale because we had an upcoming bank meeting. We're a business that's been fully funded within cash flow for 6.5, going on seven years. That's 26+ quarters of free cash flow generation. There was no concerns coming into this bank meeting. This was absolutely a deal that we did to really strengthen our positioning.
We're really excited about the opportunities we have ahead of us, and I want to make sure our ops teams has all the flexibility in their program going forward. Us, as a management team, collectively agreed this was the right opportunity to strengthen our company. From a hedging standpoint, there's not going to be any immediate impact. We're required from our bank facility just to layer on some hedges. We're going to continue down that program. As we de-lever, and really by the back half of the year, it does open up the opportunity to have kind of different thoughts around that program.
Let's come back to a little bit where we started. The management team at Ring has been on a quest to create a sustainable Permian Basin growth platform since you and the rest of the team joined in 2020. Can you just share your perspective on the accomplishments to date and how Ring is positioned to appeal to a broader investor audience moving forward?
Yeah, there's quite a bit there. If you go back to the last quarter of 2020, here we were, vaccines were just starting to be rolled out. Ring had a leverage ratio that required waivers from the bank group. Our current credit facility has a limit of three times, we were four times when I joined. At the end of that period, we're still 3.6x , still requiring a waiver. The balance sheet was a big issue. However, the core assets of the company had a tremendous amount of potential, and we knew that when we came on board. We got busy evaluating everything. We created the liquidity to keep the company going. We invested in all the highest return opportunities.
If you look back into history, like Sonu just said, we got 26 quarters in a row of managing our cash flow, staying disciplined, allocating capital to the highest rate of return opportunities. The acquisitions we've made, every single one of them has created shareholder value on a per share debt adjusted basis. We know how to do them. What have we done? What we've accomplished? When I came on board, we were about a little over eight, just a little under 9,000 barrels a day. Today, we're essentially 20,000 barrels a day. When we took a reserve database of 75 million-76 million barrels of reserves, and now we've got over 150 million barrels of reserves. Our present value is more than doubled.
Our leverage ratio, 3.6, now today we're about two, but by the end of this year, even at $75, we're going to be well below 1.7, probably closer to 1.5 or even perhaps lower than that if prices continue to sustain. What have we done during that time? We've built a 10+ year inventory of drilling opportunities that have superior economics to many of our peers and with reserve lives of over 20 years. If you look at how we've done things, we've got a long track record of disciplined management of the assets that we were put in place to steward. We've grown this company in double the size.
If you look at the capital program that we have in 2026, I've never been more excited about a capital program than the one we have this year because the results and the fruit of this capital investment program truly has the best opportunity to position this company for growth, no matter what price environment we're in. Whether we're in a low price environment again, or whether we're in a sustainably higher price environment like I believe we will be. If we were to exit this year and still be at two times levered, we're still out of the market for some of these opportunities. We can't pursue the growth, even organic growth that we'd like to because the balance sheet just really needs more attention.
What this equity raise did, it positioned this company for the options that are before us today, that we believe are going to be really going to set us up for 2027 and 2028 for explosive growth, whether that's through organic growth. We'll have the ability to do that with the investments we're making this year, and the wells that we're testing, and the transition we're making from verticals to horizontals, going to a more capital efficient program. At the same time, if another acquisition presents itself that we can demonstrate per share accretion, and on a debt-adjusted basis, keep our leverage ratios low and continue to make progress improving the leverage ratio, well then we'll have accomplished a lot. We've got five years of doing just that. We don't see any reason why that's going to change, and we really, really look forward to 2027, 2028.
Post this, even after this Iranian conflict is resolved, we believe that all the forces that put in, made all the incentives for lower oil prices, they've all been wiped out. All the on land and floating storage appears to be gone now. The world is still consuming oil at a faster rate than the world is delivering, and that's created an environment that we believe will have sustainably higher prices for a longer period of time. We just wanted to make sure that this company was positioned to take advantage of whatever those opportunities may be, and we believe we've done that. Yeah, that's really it.
Well, Paul, it'll be interesting to watch the execution as you continue to de-lever the balance sheet, and then further highlight some of these embedded growth opportunities in the stacked reservoirs you have across your asset base.
Yeah, we really are as well. We've got an incredible team in place, starting with the geologists and the geoscience team that we have. The land team, the engineering team, the operating team out in the field. Right now, it's been hard to develop a culture that seeks and pursues excellence for excellence sake. We have that team in place now. All the things that held us back, with the overhangs in our stock in the past that kept our stock from performing, can measure it with our operating and financial performance. All that is now behind us. We're in a strong price environment, and we're ready to take advantage of that. We too are looking forward to that, Jeff.
We really appreciate you providing us the opportunity to get the word out, help share some of the details of what we're thinking about and how we think about the future, where we're going to go. We've got a great team here. It's evidenced by these guys. That's why I wanted these guys to join us in this Fireside Chat because I'm really proud of them and what they're able to do for our shareholders.
We will look forward to hosting another event in the coming months. Paul, Alex, James, Sonu, thank you so much for taking the time to join us today.
You're welcome.
Yeah.
Thanks very much, Jeff.
To our participants, thank you for joining us for today's Fireside Chat with Ring's senior leadership team. Our research on Ring Energy can be accessed from our website, www.watertowerresearch.com. The views expressed in this Fireside Chat may not necessarily reflect the views of Water Tower Research LLC, and are provided for informational purposes only. This Fireside Chat may not be redistributed or reproduced without written consent of Water Tower Research and should not be considered research or a recommendation. WTR is an investor relations firm, not a licensed broker-dealer, market maker, investment bank, underwriter, or investment advisor. Additional disclaimers can be found at our website, www.watertowerresearch.com. Once again, Paul, Alexander, James, Sonu, thank you so much for joining us today.
Hey, you're welcome, and thank you for having us.