The leaders of Matador Resources Co., Dallas, have raised their full-year production guidance by 6% to about 170,000 boe/d and are looking to make the jump past 200,000 boe/d in 2025 as they build on their recent acquisition of Ameredev assets in the company’s core Delaware basin.
Matador averaged nearly 171,500 boe/d during the 3 months that ended Sept. 30 (with a little more than 100,000 b/d of oil), which was up 7% from the second quarter. That 171,500 b/d figure included nearly 2 weeks of production from Ameredev, for which chairman and chief executive officer Joseph Foran and his team paid $1.9 billion. (OGJ Online, June 12, 2024) In Matador’s third-quarter earnings report, Moran said the first seven wells turned in line since the acquisition closed Sept. 18 have beaten expectations by more than 10%.
Matador produced net income of $248 million in third-quarter 2024, a drop of 6% from the prior-year quarter when oil prices were 8% higher and natural gas prices nearly double today’s levels. Total revenues rose about 10% to $770 million and adjusted EBITDA rose to $575 million from $508 million a year earlier.
Executives expect production from the company’s 196,200 net acres in the Delaware and its combined 28,400 net acres in the Eagle Ford and Haynesville shales to grow to 198,000 boe/d this quarter. Chief financial officer Brian Willey said on an Oct. 23 conference call with analysts that Matador will continue to run nine rigs for the balance of 2024 and all of 2025. That, he added, will push upstream capital spending “a little bit higher” than this year’s $1.25 billion target.
Executives also pointed out that they’ve been able to lower drilling and completion costs to about $930 per lateral foot from their forecast of about $1,010 early this year. Chief operating officer Chris Calvert said adding some trimulfrac work as well as remote operations will contribute to pushing that number lower still next year.
“I think levers are still there to be pulled,” Calvert said. “I think we’ve proven ourselves.”
Shares of Matador (Ticker: MTDR) rose more than 3% to $52.40 on Oct. 24. They are, however, still down about 20% over the past six months, which has cut the company’s market capitalization to about $6.5 billion.
Geert De Lombaerde | Senior Editor
A native of Belgium, Geert De Lombaerde has more than two decades of business journalism experience and writes about markets and economic trends for Endeavor Business Media publications Healthcare Innovation, IndustryWeek, FleetOwner, Oil & Gas Journal and T&D World. With a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri, he began his reporting career at the Business Courier in Cincinnati and later was managing editor and editor of the Nashville Business Journal. Most recently, he oversaw the online and print products of the Nashville Post and reported primarily on Middle Tennessee’s finance sector as well as many of its publicly traded companies.