Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the W&T Offshore First Quarter 2026 Conference Call. During today's call, all parties will be in a listen-only mode. Following the company's prepared comments, the call will be opened for questions- and- answers. During the question and answer session, we ask that you limit yourselves to one question and a follow-up. You can always rejoin the queue. This conference is being recorded and a replay will be made available on the company's website following the call. I would now like to turn the conference over to Al Petrie, Investor Relations Coordinator.
Thank you, Michael, and on behalf of the management team, I would like to welcome all of you to today's conference call to review W&T Offshore's First Quarter 2026 Financial and Operational Results. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that our comments may include forward-looking statements. It should be noted that a variety of factors could cause W&T's actual results to differ materially from the anticipated results or expectations expressed in these forward-looking statements. Today's call may also contain certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to the earnings release that we issued yesterday for disclosures on forward-looking statements and reconciliations of non-GAAP measures. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Tracy Krohn, our Chairman and CEO.
Thank you, Al. Good morning, everyone, welcome to our First Quarter Conference Call for 2026. With me today are William Williford, our Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, Sameer Parasnis, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, and Trey Hartman, our Vice President and Chief Accounting Officer, who are all available to answer questions later during the call. Good news in that we started 2026 on a positive note with strong operational and financial results that either met or exceeded our guidance across multiple metrics. Our production was 36,200 barrels oil equivalent per day. That's toward the higher end of guidance and flat with the fourth quarter of 2025, despite some adverse weather impacts in early 2026.
The solid quarterly results start with our ability to maintain strong production, we're aided by our realized prices of $45.08 per barrel oil equivalent, an increase of 26% from the fourth quarter. In March, our realized oil price was $88.61 per barrel. Additionally, our lease operating expense, LOE, was down 11% to $66 million below the midpoint of guidance. Reductions in our LOE costs were mainly driven by lower base LOE spend. That's reflecting fourth quarter 2025 cost-saving initiatives that began to materialize in the first quarter of 2026. All these positives helped us generate $55 million in adjusted EBITDA, our highest quarterly number since the third quarter of 2023. We're also very pleased to have generated $21 million in free cash flow.
That's a significant improvement from the fourth quarter of last year. Our ability to execute our strategy has delivered very positive results to start off 2026, including a healthy balance sheet and enhanced liquidity. At the end of the first quarter of 2026, our total debt and net debt were $351 million and $220 million, respectively, and our liquidity was $175 million. We built W&T using a proven and successful strategy that is committed to profitability, operational execution, returning value to our stakeholders, and ensuring the safety of our employees and contractors. We've consistently delivered operationally and financially with low decline production, meaningful EBITDA, and seamlessly integrating accretive producing property acquisitions during our nearly 45-year history.
Capital expenditures in the first quarter of 2026 were $7 million, and asset retirement settlement costs totaled $17 million. We continue to expect our full-year capital expenditures to be between $20 million and $25 million, which excludes potential acquisition opportunities. Our budget for ARO remains the same at $34 million-$42 million. Yesterday, we provided our detailed guidance for second quarter 2026 and reiterated our unchanged full-year production and cost guidance. In the second quarter of 2026, we have a planned third-party Mobile Bay natural gas processing facility turnaround that will impact our NGL volumes and temporarily increase our LOE. However, our full-year LOE guidance has not changed. We are forecasting the midpoint of Q2 2026 production to be around 34,300 barrels of oil equivalent per day.
This is a decrease of 5% compared to the first quarter of 2026, driven primarily by the turnaround, but the key is that we haven't changed full-year guidance. Second quarter LOE is expected to be $71 million-$79 million, up from first quarter actual of $66 million. This is due to the planned Mobile Bay turnaround as well as higher planned workover and facility maintenance work that is expected to benefit production in the second half of 2026. It's important to note that the LOE expenses tend to increase and decrease seasonally with much of the work being accomplished during warmer weather months that also produce less wind.
Second quarter transportation and production taxes are expected to be between $7 million and $8 million, compared with $9 million in the first quarter, which reflects some of the benefit of the new pipeline we installed for the West Delta 73 field. Second quarter cash G&A, those costs are expected to remain comparable to our Q1 results. I want to point out that we tend to spend significantly less than our peers in capital expenditures and choose to instead spend more dollars on low risk, high rate of return workovers and facility optimization. We believe this is a more economic way to invest our operational cash flow back into our business, and it's a lower risk option. We can then build cash flow to help us make accretive acquisitions of producing properties.
Over the years, we have consistently created significant value by methodically integrating producing property acquisitions. We look for strong producing assets with meaningful reserves and an affordable price that we can integrate into our vast infrastructure. We primarily spend LOE dollars to work over, recomplete, and upgrade these assets. As a result, we often see additional production uplift from these acquisitions above the rates they were producing when purchased. This strategy makes W&T unique, but it's our ability to execute over and over throughout the years that allows us to add value. With our low decline production, increasing realized pricing, and continued cost control, we believe that we are well-positioned operationally and financially to deliver robust results in 2026 while we examine accretive acquisition opportunities. Before closing, I would like to discuss some regulatory updates in more detail.
As we mentioned in yesterday's earnings release, the Department of the Interior has proposed some positive regulatory changes that would roll back obligations from a 2024 rule that would require companies to set aside about $6.9 billion in supplemental financial assurance. This all occurred in the prior administration. About $6 billion would have applied to small businesses that make up most of the operators in the Gulf. The proposed changes will better align financial assurance requirements with actual decommissioning risk and reduce industry-wide bonding costs by at least $0.5 billion annually. These proposed revisions have been published in the Federal Register with a 60-day public comment period, which is expected to end May 15th. We welcome these changes proposed by the Trump administration that can further encourage U.S. offshore production growth and increase America's energy independence.
Regarding the surety litigation, I'm able to report that the district court has rejected the surety's attempt to require W&T to immediately pay their demands, I would call them ridiculous demands, for collateral. The sureties are appealing that ruling, and W&T will continue to vigorously defend our position that the surety's demands for collateral were neither appropriate nor lawful. Moreover, W&T prevailed in virtually every respect as it relates to the surety's attempt to dismiss the claims W&T has asserted in lawsuit. Yesterday, the court granted W&T's request to file an amended lawsuit, which sets forth broad antitrust and other claims against the sureties. This case will go on.
As can be reviewed in our court filings, the surety's conduct caused W&T to incur substantial damages. We intend to seek to remedy the conduct and obtain damages to the fullest extent of the law. In closing, I'd like to thank our team at W&T for all their efforts. We are ready and able to add significant value in 2026. W&T has been an active, responsible, and profitable operator in the Gulf of Mexico for over 40 years. We have a long track record of successfully integrating assets into our portfolio. We know that the Gulf of Mexico is a world-class basin, being the second-largest basin by production and the largest basin in the U.S.A. by area.
We have a solid cash position and strong liquidity that enables us to continue to evaluate growth opportunities while continuing to generate strong operational cash flow and adjusted EBITDA. We will maintain our focus on operational excellence and maximizing the cash flow potential of our asset base in 2026 and beyond. Operator, we can now open the lines for questions.
We will now begin the question-and-answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star then two. At this time, we'll pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Your first question today comes from Derrick Whitfield with Texas Capital. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Tracy and team, and thanks for your time.
Good morning, Derrick.
Starting with your guidance, while I understand you are reiterating production guidance for the full year, how would you characterize your desire to further lean into workovers in this favorable environment?
Well, that's always a key factor for us. We've always got a good inventory of things to do. As we've acquired assets over the years, we take the time to study them and restudy them. That allows us to continue doing these workovers. Do expect to see some more of that. You know, we'll ramp up a little bit during the summer because the weather is better. You know, late spring, summer, which is about now. In fact, we're moving some things around in the Gulf now to begin that process. Yeah, I mean, this has always been a key strong point for us, along with not only workovers but recompletions.
Great, Tracy. Maybe just shifting over to the M&A environment. Wanted to get your thoughts on the competitive landscape at present. Is it safe to assume we're in a pencils down environment for larger packages, or are you seeing reasonable action in the market at present?
You know, the company's got a very strong liquidity position right now. There's been a dearth of significant transactions for the last several years in the Gulf. We feel pretty good about where we are. We're in different data rooms, you know, almost continuously over the years. I think that there's real good possibility that things are gonna start moving around. We certainly have aspirations in that direction and intend to continue to pursue things that will fit our normal financial criteria.
That criteria usually starts with cash flow and then also what is the reserve base and what are the things that we can do to increase cash flow near term, such as workovers and recompletions and facilities upgrades that will generate those numbers near term.
Great update. Thanks for your time.
Thank you, sir.
Your next question comes from Bert Donnes with William Blair. Please go ahead.
Hey, Tracy, this is actually Neil. Just have two quick ones for you.
All right.
How you doing? Nice to be back on the call.
Good, Neil.
My first question, Tracy, just I know part of the upside for you all is converting a lot of the 2P to primary reserves. Again, I'm just wondering, again, seems like with the plan you've laid out, I still feel like there's a lot of that going on. Could you just tell us, you know, what do you think the timing of that would be?
Well, the really cool part about our 2P reserves is that a lot of that, a lot of those reserves come to us in the form of cash and then later on booked reserves. As time moves forward, we see that first as cash flow. That's cash flow and reserves that we don't have to spend any CapEx on. That's been a real focal point of the company over many years. It's why we have traditionally very low decline rates. That shows itself up as massive amounts of cash and reserves over time. It seems to have always been that way for the company since, well, since we started.
I try to reiterate that to investors in just about every presentation that we do. There are additional reserves that are probables that we do have to spend some CapEx on it. We look forward to doing that in the near future. We haven't been doing a lot of drilling lately 'cause we haven't needed to. One of the hallmarks of the company is making sure that, you know, we try to continue the cash flow stream. If any time that I can acquire reserves as opposed to going and drilling for them at approximately the same price, that's what we're gonna do. We're gonna take the risk out of and do that.
That's one of the reasons why we're still here after 40 something years. That's a great question, Neil. I appreciate it.
No, I love that upside. Secondly, as you said, not that you're gonna have to go drill much, but, you know, kind of you have a very low CapEx guide. I'm just wondering, does that factor in, you know, around the workovers that Derrick talked about? Just service costs in all, Tracy, are they holding in right now, or what are you seeing for service costs?
Part of that is exactly what you suggested, holding on and, you know, making judicious decisions about workovers and recompletions. Part of it's to make sure that we maintain really good liquidity. I think there will be opportunities going forward in the market for us to make additional acquisitions. Again, it's not that we don't have wells to drill, we do. We have a pretty good inventory of exploration opportunities and in fact, even proven reserve opportunities that are substantial. It's not because we don't have inventory, it's because management, including myself, believes that opportunities to do additional acquisitions are good. We like the way that we're positioned in this market, and we have good liquidity.
Perfect. Thank you much, sir. Congrats.
Thank you.
Again, if you have a question, please press star then one. Your next question comes from Jeff Robertson with Water Tower Research. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Tracy, just to follow up on your previous comments. W&T has a pretty low reinvestment rate when you think about cash flow from operations in 2026, and yet production is expected to stay relatively flat for the year from where you were in the first quarter based on your midpoint guidance. To your point about capital light business model, is a lot of that production performance just related to, as Neil talked about, moving 2P reserves into PDP without any capital? Is that something that goes on for 2026, 2027 and beyond just based on your reserve profile and performance of your assets?
Yeah, the short answer to that is yes. We again, with probable reserves, because of the quirks around the booking of those, via the SEC, we have to wait a while before we can put them back in as proved reserves. Often, those are just additions to proved producing. We get a dual effect there of not only do we increase the reserves, but we increase our borrowing capacity as well. That's a double plus for us. This is normal. This is the actions of corporation. I've done this illustration in just about every investor meeting we've ever had.
I have an illustration in the deck that shows you the effects of the probable reserves and how they get to be proved producing reserves over time. We generally book them again as cash flow and reserves over time. Then again, it's not that we don't have inventory to drill, we do, but it's nice to have that additional bit of reserves. You know, in Europe, they look at this as Companies are valued more on the 2P basis than they are just 1P. Our regulators have been a little bit slow to do that. That's always been a complaint. I don't understand the rationale behind it.
It seems ridiculous to me because we've proven it over and over and over again that we definitely increase the reserves and the cash flow over time without additional CapEx.
When you think about acquisitions, two-part question. One is, are you able to buy on a 1P basis? Secondly, you spoke about the regulatory environment and some of the things that are coming down the road. Will that have an impact on M&A activity in the Gulf of Mexico, do you think?
Yeah. That's a pretty good two-part question, Jeff . To answer your question on 1P, it really, it's a bunch of different factors. It's not just necessarily 1P. We do look at the entire reserve stack, and again, we like to see acquisitions that have cash flow and a reserve base that we can forecast. Also, you know, we like to see some upside too, where we can do some work or drill some wells, that sort of thing. They're all a little bit different. Of course, in the Gulf, you have to take into consideration what are the asset retirement obligations.
That's a very important part of what we do. We manage that very well. The company has done more plug and abandonment decommissioning on those AROs than anyone. We've spent over $1 billion doing that decommissioning work over the years. We think that we are the expert in that market. We understand it very, very well. That's one of the things that we always look at closely in determining value. As far as the other things that we're looking for, yeah, I mean, we're in a mode where we're looking around for things that are gonna fit our financial criteria.
We have been in data rooms, you know, for quite a while.
Thank you.
Thank you, sir.
Seeing no further questions, this concludes our question- and- answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Tracy Krohn, Chairman and CEO, for any closing remarks.
Thank you, operator. We appreciate everybody listening. You know, I look forward to every day. I never know what's going to happen with regards to the markets and it seems that with the war in Iran, it's been a little bit more difficult to think about it in terms of going forward. On the other hand, we're very pleased that, you know, the company is doing well and in position to do even better. Thank you for listening, and we look forward to talking to you again soon.
The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.