NOG - Northern Oil and Gas Inc. (NOG) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

2024-02-23 15:08:03 ET

Northern Oil and Gas, Inc. (NOG)

Q4 2023 Earnings Conference Call

February 23, 2024, 09:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Evelyn Infurna - VP, IR

Nick O'Grady - CEO

Adam Dirlam - President

Chad Allen - CFO

Jim Evans - Chief Technical Officer

Conference Call Participants

Neal Dingmann - Truist

Charles Meade - Johnson Rice

Scott Hanold - RBC Capital Markets

John Freeman - Raymond James

Phillips Johnston - Capital One

Donovan Schafer - Northland Capital Markets

Paul Diamond - Citi

John Abbott - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Noel Parks - Tuohy Brothers

Presentation

Operator

Greetings and welcome to the NOG's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2023 Earnings Conference Call. At this time all participants are in listen-only mode. The question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded.

It's now my pleasure to introduce your host Evelyn Infurna, Vice President, Investor Relations. Thank you, you may begin.

Evelyn Infurna

Good morning. Welcome to NOG's fourth quarter and year end 2023 earnings conference call. Yesterday after the close, we released our financial results for the fourth quarter and full year. You can access our earnings release and presentation on our Investor Relations website at noginc.com. Our Form 10-K will be filed with the SEC within the next several days.

I'm joined this morning by our Chief Executive Officer, Nick O'Grady; our President, Adam Dirlam, our Chief Financial Officer Chad Allen and our Chief Technical Officer, Jim Evans.

Our agenda for today's call is as follows. Nick will provide his remarks on the quarter and our recent accomplishments, then Adam will give you an overview of operations and business development activities, and Chad will review our financial results and walk through our 2024 guidance. After our prepared remarks, the team will be available to answer any questions.

But before we begin, let me go over our Safe Harbor language. Please be advised that our remarks today including the answers to your questions may include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to be materially different from the expectations contemplated by our forward-looking statements. Those risks include, among others matters that we've described in our earnings release as well as our filings with the SEC, including our annual report on Form 10-K and our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, we disclaim any obligation to update these forward-looking statements.

During today's call, we may discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures including adjusted EBITDA, adjusted net income and free cash flow. Reconciliations that these measures to the closest GAAP measures can be found in our earnings release.

With that, I will turn the call over to Nick.

Nick O'Grady

Thank you, Evelyn. Welcome. And good morning, everyone, and thank you for your interest in our company. I'll get right to it with four key points to start the year. Number one, scoreboard, execution delivering growth and profits. On our second quarter call, I spoke about the importance of delivering growth in profitability year-over-year. I'd like to use that framework today to put the results from the fourth quarter into context. Our fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA was up 52% year-over-year, and our quarterly cash flow from operations excluding working capital was up 55% year-over-year.

Over the same period, our weighted average fully diluted share count was up about 17% significantly less reflecting the impact from our October offering, but not the impact of our fourth quarter bolt-on deals. We achieved outsized growth in profits despite a more challenging commodity backdrop than the prior year. Oil prices were down over 5% and natural gas prices were down 52% versus the prior period a year ago. ...

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