Highpeak Energy Inc
NASDAQ:HPK
Earnings Call Analysis
Q4-2023 Analysis
Highpeak Energy Inc
HighPeak enjoyed a transformational year in 2023, achieving significant milestones and outperforming many peers. Production rates soared over 86% from the previous year, averaging more than 50,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (BOE/d). Even after scaling back from 6 to 2 rigs in response to declining commodity prices, the company still met its annual production guidance. This resilience is a testament to the quality of HighPeak's assets and the team's dedication.
The company's financial position strengthened, leading to an EBITDAX approximating a $1 billion annual run rate. A well-managed balance sheet resulted in a leverage ratio of 1x net debt to fourth quarter annualized EBITDA, and the second half of 2023 saw approximately $110 million in extra cash flow. In a strategic move to amplify shareholder returns, HighPeak increased its quarterly dividend by 60% and initiated a $75 million share buyback program.
HighPeak stands apart in its margin per BOE with an unhedged margin of $53.20, which surpasses the average peer margin by 68% and outperforms the closest peer by 30%. This significant margin is driven by a high oil cut, desirable in a market challenged by low natural gas prices.
HighPeak boasts a remarkable inventory with over 1,700 drilling locations, ensuring a runway of nearly 15 years at the current drilling pace. The focus is on two primary zones, Wolfcamp A and Lower Spraberry, with continual growth in drillable locations despite active well drilling. With strong prospects in other geological zones and little reliance on risky expenditures, HighPeak is adeptly positioned for consistent, high-return growth while preserving shareholder value.
In 2024, HighPeak will maintain a two-rig, one-frac crew development plan, focusing on high-return co-investment in its primary zones. This conservative approach is designed to sustain current production levels while maximizing free cash flow and reducing debt. Nevertheless, flexibility remains for increasing activity if the market justifies such an expansion.
HighPeak acknowledges a surge in mergers and acquisitions (M&A), particularly in the high-return Permian Basin, attributing it to the scarcity of quality drilling inventory. Unlike many in the industry, HighPeak is armed with an extensive inventory and faces prospective rising valuations amidst this M&A fervor. The company's robust infrastructure and controlled acreage position over mostly oil-weighted reserves imbue it with confidence in both its current state and any strategic moves amid the shifting market dynamics.
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Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to HighPeak Energy 2023 Fourth Quarter Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions]. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Steven Tholen, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to HighPeak Energy's Fourth Quarter 2023 Earnings Call. Representing HighPeak today are Chairman and CEO, Jack Hightower; President, Michael Hollis; and I am Stephen Tholen, the Chief Financial Officer. During today's call, we will make reference to our March investor presentation and our fourth quarter earnings release, which can be found on HighPeak's website. Today's call participants may make certain forward-looking statements relating to the company's financial condition, results of operations, expectations, plans, goals, assumptions and future performance. So please refer to the cautionary information regarding forward-looking statements and related risks in the company's SEC filings, including the fact that actual results may differ materially from our expectations due to a variety of reasons, many of which are beyond our control. We will also refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures on today's call. so please see the reconciliations in the earnings release and in our March investor presentation. I will now turn the call over to our Chairman and CEO, Jack Hightower.
Thank you, Steve, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for joining us today. If you'll turn to Page 4 of the slide presentation in the March investor deck, that's where I'm going to begin the presentation. As mentioned in implementing our corporate vision, '19 -- or 2023 was absolutely a transformational year for HighPeak. Just look at what we accomplished in '23. We reached a production milestone of over 50,000 barrels a day. We grew our average production rate by over 86% from '22. We exercised capital discipline by reducing our rig count as commodity prices pulled back. We strengthened our balance sheet and our liquidity position with our debt refinancing in '23. We reached 2 additional major milestones when we became free cash flow positive and generated over $1 billion in annual revenue. With a transformational '23 behind us, we now focus on '24 being a year of realization for HighPeak, a year where we focus on free cash flow generation, pay down of debt and returning value to our shareholders. Now turning to Slide 5. We're going to outline our core values and how we're going to create additional shareholder value. We will continue to exercise disciplined operations. Our 2-rig program will allow our operations team to be laser-focused on optimizing our capital costs and to continue driving down our operating expenses. We will also continue to organically increase our acreage position through the ground game in areas where we have expanded the delineation of our primary zones. From a financial perspective, we will remain focused on generating free cash flow, which will be earmarked for debt pay down and provide us with a nice liquidity cushion going forward. In addition, we will look to maximize shareholder value through our recent 60% dividend increase to an annual rate of over $0.16 per share. Our recently announced opportunistic share repurchase program and an additional acreage acquisitions and ultimately, through our strategic alternative process. Now turning to Page 6, and we're going to talk about some of the company highlights. Focusing on production levels for a moment in the fourth quarter, our sales volume averaged over 50,000 BOE a day. Our fourth quarter production volumes were negatively impacted by weather issues and unforeseen midstream maintenance interruptions which total over 3,000 barrels a day. In addition to our frac hits that just normally happen on a monthly -- or day-to-day monthly basis as we frac additional wells. So far, during the first quarter, our operations have been running smoothly and weather-related impacts have been fairly minimal as evidenced by our current production rates of approximately 50,000 barrels a day. I'd also like to take this opportunity to point out that although we reduced our development plan from 6 rigs to 2 rigs during the middle of the year, we were still able to hit both of our 2023 annual production guidance after factoring in fourth quarter production impacts and our annual capital budget. This is a testament to the quality of our asset base and the caliber and dedication of our operations team. I'd like to now draw your attention to the red line on the map, which highlights our newly acquired acreage in Northern Flat Top. We've increased our acreage position by over 18,000 acres in Northern Flat Top, moving from roughly 114,000 to 132,000 net acres now. The majority of which is located in this area, where we have continued to have success in our primary zones moving north. We remain very excited about our recent well results in this area, which are consistent with the performance in our core flat top area. Almost 200 additional locations over in our primary operating zones. Even considering under financial highlights, -- the slightly reduced sales volumes and lower commodity prices during the fourth quarter compared with the third quarter, our quarterly EBITDAX still approximates $1 billion annual run rate. We ended the year with a very reasonable leverage ratio of 1x net debt to fourth quarter annualized EBITDA. We generated additional free cash flow during the quarter of about $34 million, and that brings our total second half 2023 cash flow to approximately $110 million. As I've previously reported, we also increased our quarterly dividend by 60% to over $0.04 a share, and we authorized a $75 million opportunistic share buyback. Now turning to Slide 7. This gives the established proven position of HighPeak now in the Midland Basin as a player that is established now and shows a history from 2020 all the way up to through 2023. We consummated our business combination in 2020. We started with minimum production and over the past few years, we have increased our production as quickly as I have ever witnessed anyone organically grow production during my 53 years of history in this business, while also establishing Eastern Howard County as a core oil producing area of the Midland Basin. Looking forward into 2024, our capital efficiency will continue to improve as we maintain focus on codeveloping our primary reserves and primary zones in the Wolfcamp A and Lower Spraberry. Historically, we have flexed our development plan up or down depending on commodity prices and return on investment. We will make sure that as we adapt to various pricing environments, we will be slow on the gas and quick on the brakes, and you can demonstrate how easy it is as we increase the rig count to increase our production with the wonderful inventory we have in place. As I always say, this business is about location, location, location and our ability to grow the business with this trajectory is the ultimate proof that our rock in this area is excellent. Now turning to Slide 8. I'm going to talk a little bit about our year-end proved reserves. As noted, you can see that we continue to significantly increase year-over-year with 2023 growing 25% compared to the prior year and from '22 to '23 over 30%. So we've had consistent almost 30% growth for the last 2 years. We have over 90% liquids proved reserve stock, which absolutely differentiates us from all our public peers. This provides HighPeak with higher operating margins, especially during this period of relatively low natural gas prices. Over the past 3 years as a public company, we have achieved a 90% proved reserves compounded annual growth rate, almost entirely through the drill bit, unprecedented. Our 2023 reserve replacement ratio was almost 300% and we grew our total crude reserves to 154 million barrels in spite of the SEC price dropping close to 20% year-over-year. I will remind everyone that we are very conservative in the way we book our PUDs. In fact, of our total primary locations, less than 190 locations are booked as PUDs. So we have substantial additional reserve value that is not captured in these numbers and we have significant additional inventory that we will cover later in the presentation. And now I'm going to turn the presentation over to Mike Hollis, who is our President, to discuss operations and corporate efficiency. Mike?
Thanks, Jack. Now turning to Slide 9 to discuss our margins. HighPeak stands alone amongst our public peers in margin per BOE. As I've mentioned in the past, not all BOEs are created equal. Our high oil cut drives differential margins for our shareholders. As one would expect with natural gas prices trading at historical lows and our high cash operating margins are continuing to walk further away from our peer group in HighPeak's favor. Our unhedged fourth quarter EBITDAX margin of $53.20 per BOE was 68% higher than our peer average margin of $31.69 and 30% higher than our closest peer. At HighPeak it's in our DNA to pursue excellence and drive our cost down. Our efficient operations and utilization of our company-owned infrastructure will continue to drive margins higher. As a comparison to equate the same EBITDAX generated by HighPeak's high oil cut, 50,000 BOEs a day in the fourth quarter, our average peer would have to have produced approximately 84,000 of their BOEs to generate the same EBITDAX. In my opinion, HighPeak's margins will continue to dominate the peer group over the next handful of years as natural gas and NGL prices continued to face headwinds. We are extremely fortunate to have access to such a sort after and extensive inventory of oily rock. Now turning to Slide 10 to discuss our operations. Efficiencies enhance free cash flow generation. There are 3 pillars that drive corporate returns and free cash flow generation. They are: number one, high-margin oil production and having significant inventory of great rock to drill, number two, keeping your operating costs low, having a laser focus on driving efficiency. Number three, continue to drive future CapEx costs down dollar per lateral foot completed needed to hold or grow your production. HighPeak checks all of these boxes. I will address each of these pillars on this slide. Pillar 1, the map in the center of the slide highlights the 2023 activity to date. Note the dark blue sticks, they blanket the 2 acreage blocks completely. We increased our production in 2023, 86% year-over-year with this activity. The oil in the stock tank is proof that the rock is good. As Jack mentioned earlier, we have added 18,000 new acres in our Northern flat top areas that we are extremely excited about. This new acreage lies adjacent to an area where we have significant existing PP wells, both in the Wolfcamp A and Lower Spraberry zones. We have already drilled a well on the new acreage and initial logging, cuttings and petrophysical analysis suggests the oil in place is as good or better than our core flat top area. We look forward to discussing this production in upcoming calls. And as we noted on this map, you can see where our 2 rigs are currently located. Now pillar #2, driving op costs down. On the left-hand side of this slide, you can see our LOE performance throughout 2023. You may ask what are some of the drivers of this performance? I have to give credit to the operations group for focusing time and effort to maximize production uptime of these wells and reduce failures. Also optimizing field-wide chemical programs by taking a holistic approach through the full life cycle of the wells and by more fully utilizing HighPeak's world-class infrastructure. I'm proud to show the inset picture of the HighPeak silver farm. These panels are up, and the tie-ins are being made, electrons are expected to flow in May. This will further reduce our power cost, driving down LOE and also minimizing our carbon footprint. I look forward to being able to say we are drilling on sunshine this summer. Now pillar #3, capital efficiency. On the right-hand side of this slide, you can see our historical DC&E calls per foot. The industry enjoyed historical -- historically low cost during COVID. Unfortunately, we also had low commodity prices as well. In the post-COVID area -- era, there were extreme inflationary pressures stemming from supply chain constraints and rapid industry-wide acceleration of activity. Now post-COVID to date, we have seen capital cost trend significantly lower, roughly 25% from the highs. Now I want to draw your attention to the star on the chart. This represents our third quarter 2023 actuals. This is the $1 per foot that we budgeted for 2024. We are adhering to an underpromised, overdeliver philosophy. Currently, we're seeing HighPeak's DC&E cost running approximately 7% below those numbers budgeted for 2024. We generated $110 million of free cash flow in the second half of 2023. And winning free cash flow mode, any dollar saved is an additional dollar contributed to free cash flow, further enhancing HighPeak shareholder initiatives like debt repayment, dividends or stock buybacks. Our 2024 budget is slightly front half weighted due to carry-in of DUCs from our 2023 program. As we exited the year running 3 rigs, our infrastructure projects to tie in our newer acreage will also be somewhat front-half weighted. The right rock, productivity and oil mix with low-cost operations, efficient deployment of capital, drive corporate efficiency and enhance free cash flow generation. This puts HighPeak in an enviable position to drive shareholder value. Now turning to Slide 11 to discuss our inventory. As shown on Slide 11, it has over 1,700 drilling locations in what we consider to be our primary zones. In our bread and butter, Wolfcamp A and Lower Spraberry zones, we have close to 15 years of inventory at our current development base. I would also like to point out that we are not only organically able to grow our production 86% year-over-year in '23 and not only replenish our inventory, but we increased the number of drillable locations in our primary zones at the end of 2023. We ended '22 with a little over 600 locations in the Wolfcamp A and Lower Spraberry. And at the end of '23, we now have over 700 locations in those 2 ventures even after drilling approximately 85 wells into those zones during the 2023 calendar year. Counting the Wolfcamp B and the Wolfcamp D, we add another 2 decades of running room. Our upside targets in the Middle Spraberry and Wolfcamp C push our runway out to close to half a century. We're blessed to have decades worth of oil-rich, low-cost, high-margin inventory, which we will be able to economically convert to free cash to return to shareholders. Furthermore, some of our upside zones are currently being drilled and delineated by our direct offset operators. We are extremely excited about some of these initial results, and we enjoy being the beneficiary of this potential upside without HighPeak having to spend the risk dollars at this stage. Finally, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank our geology and land departments for their hard work over the last year. In a market environment where high-quality inventory is extremely scarce and companies are paying top dollar for that remaining inventory, our team was able to identify or organically acquire high-value locations, setting the stage for HighPeak to deliver exceptional returns to shareholders. And with [Indiscernible] now complete, I'll turn the call back over to Jack to discuss this year's development plan and guidance.
Before we turn to Slide 12, I'd like to take this opportunity to throw some much deserved appreciation to our operations team. They did a fantastic job of navigating our field operations last year and quickly and efficiently adapting to the changes in our rig cadence. It wasn't easy going from 6 rigs back down to 2 rigs, while helping us still achieve an 86% growth in production last year. We're truly blessed to have such a great operational team. Now turning our focus on Slide 12, looking into -- to 2024. We designed our program around a 2-rig 1 frac crew development cadence this year. Our plan will remain focused on high-return co-investment in our Wolfcamp A and Lower Spraberry zones in this current commodity price environment. We may also decide to drill a few wells into some of our upside zones if we continue to like what we see from our offset operators, which is pretty exciting right now in various zones. We reduced our development plan to 2 rigs in early February and are currently running 1 frac crew. With the additional carry-in wells that Mike mentioned in our 2-rig program, we will be able to fully utilize 1 frac crew during this year's business. Approximately 90% of our capital will be invested through the drill bit this year. In future years, this percentage will increase as the need for infrastructure spending will reduce to about 50% of this year's budget. Even with the addition of the acreage, the infrastructure is very efficient and is almost 100% in place. And as Mike previously discussed, we feel that there's additional savings that we may potentially realize this year on both CapEx and operations side of the equation. We provided an unlevered free cash flow sensitivity chart based on consensus oil prices ranging from $70 a barrel to $90 a barrel from a high-level view, a $10 barrel increase in oil prices equates to over $100 million of additional free cash flow. There's no question that we have proven the capability of our asset base to increase production levels quickly and economically. However, given the current commodity price environment, which has been fairly volatile over the past few months due to various geopolitical tensions, anticipated interest rate movements and fragile economies, we've seen oil prices move around from the high 60s to the low 80s. In the current market, we feel that the best development plan is to maintain production at '23 levels and focus on free cash flow generation and debt reduction. However, this does not preclude the opportunity to increase activity levels in the future if prices stabilize at a level that justifies additional activity. I do want to emphasize to everyone and reiterate that we will always look to run our program within our operational cash flow on a go-forward basis. Now turning to Slide 13. And this goes to the scarcity of quality inventory that has been driving M&A activity. It's no secret to anyone on today's call that there's a huge wave of M&A activity taking place within our industry, especially in the Permian Basin. And the underlying reason for this scenario is due to the scarcity of remaining high-quality drilling inventory and high-return areas like the Permian. This situation is not just a fear factor, it's reality. The U.S. has grown its domestic production levels considerably over the past decade at an unprecedented pace, but we're reaching a point where the growth pattern is beginning to level off and at some point in the near future it will actually start to decline. It's my belief that this scenario will happen faster than most of the experts are currently predicting. I think you will start to see degrading capital efficiency in almost all shale basins over the next few years as Tier 1 inventory is exhausted at current development cadences. We are fortunate at HighPeak that we have close to 1.5 decades of delineated high-return inventory, especially at our 2 rig cadence. Even with increasing rigs, we still enjoy tremendous long-term inventory. In addition, we enjoy a large controlled acreage position with very few non-operated partners, which facilitates the drilling of long lateral wells and efficient build-out of infrastructure. This gives us complete total control of our own destiny. We absolutely have differentiated oil-weighted high-margin production and reserves, something that will remain extremely valuable over the near to medium term as natural gas prices continue to face major headwinds. We spent the time, effort and capital to build out an infield infrastructure system that is truly world-class. This system allows us to continue to realize additional cost savings, facilitate our ESG goals and flex our activity levels up or down without overrunning the system. All of these attractive attributes make us firm believers that high peak is in an attractive position relative to current M&A activity. Now turning to Slide 14 to wrap up. Our key takeaways are that '23 was definitely a truly transformational year for HighPeak, and we're continuing to carry positive momentum going forward into '24. We accomplished the major goals that we set out last year, which positioned us as an established player in the Midland Basin. We achieved our annual production guidance even taking into account the reduction of our rig count and our curtail production volumes. We reached the free cash flow inflection point milestone. We quickly and efficiently adapted our program as commodity prices merited and have designed our '24 program based on capital discipline and focused on capital efficiencies, free cash flow generation and debt reduction. We fortified our balance sheet, were providing us with additional liquidity and flexibility and no near-term debt maturities. We reduced our costs across the board, both on CapEx and OpEx side of the equation, and we have line of sight to additional savings in 2024. We recently enhanced our value -- return of value to shareholders with a 60% increase in our quarterly dividend and authorized an opportunistic share buyback program. In addition, in light of current market environment, we have reengaged our strategic alternative process. Due to all of the [Indiscernible] things I just mentioned, I'm extremely excited about what '24 will bring to our shareholders. And so now I'm going to open up the call to questions from our analysts. And one question that I've already had that I think is important to emphasize is if your production is going to maintain flat to decline with only 2 rigs, then aren't you going to have a less of a potential sale price on a multiple of EBITDA? What I'd like to point out is we have seen extremes in the marketplace where companies sell at a multiple of 3 to 3.5x EBITDA all the way up to establishing over $7 million per location of inventory. We feel like well over half of our value will be our inventory of locations, not just selling on a multiple of EBITDA. So we are extremely encouraged by what the value of the company will be compared to where our stock value is today. And now I'll open up the call to questions from our analysts.
Thank you. As a reminder, [Operator instructions]. Our first question comes from the line of John White from Roth MKM Capital.
Congratulations on having run such a good 2023. I was on another call with another Permian operator and they cited decreased prices for tubulars, casing and chemicals. I'm wondering if you're seeing the same trend, and what are you seeing in terms of rotatory drilling rig rates? What direction are they headed?
John, I'm going to let Mike who oversees our operations on a daily basis. He's got a very current sense of the direction overall that's taking place in the industry. So Michael, we'll answer John's question.
You bet. Thanks, John, for the question. And I think, look, for everyone else on the call, while we were doing our prepared remarks, we got a note that some folks were having a hard time getting and downloading the presentation. So all of that has been resolved, so if you were having any issue getting the presentation that we were running through in the prepared remarks, please try again, things will work now. But to answer your question, John, we kind of walked through it and hopefully, you were able to see the slide, but we kind of walk through what prices have done over the last 3 years. And I think all of our cohorts and peers in the industry are telling you exactly what we're seeing as well. Again, with HighPeak, we try to make sure that we don't lock in pricing for a long period of time in a very volatile kind of market. So we were able to enjoy the decreases since kind of the post-COVID era that roughly 25% reduction in overall cost, we've been able to enjoy that on the way down. Obviously, that's continuing to bid out and stay on top of activity. And with the group that we have here at HighPeak we've got a lot of experience and time in the industry to be able to gather what other companies may have to have a lot of scale and activity to get the pricing. We're able to receive some of those pricings as well because we've been in the market where answer many rigs in the past here in HighPeak and other companies. So to answer your specific questions about rig rates, we definitely saw rig rates peaking 6 to 9 months ago and you were seeing folks looking out upwards to kind of the $35,000 a day for rig rates for Tier 1 super-spec ratings. What we're seeing now, we never got to that point because we weren't trying to lock in multiyear contracts so we never approached much above $30,000. Today, you're down closer to the $28,000, $27,000 range on an average for your higher-spec rigs, they're somehow a little cheaper. But again, we look holistically. We may not use the cheapest [Indiscernible], it's how we put the whole pie together that allows us to generate the lowest dollar per foot in the public space today.
And another question. What level of crude oil price would you have to see and how long would you have to see it to decide to add a third rig.
Good question, John. Of course, price in and of itself is one part of the equation. Our return on investment is another part and where the economy looks to be going. As we mentioned, a $10 increase in oil gives us roughly $110 million plus of additional EBITDA, which goes directly to free cash flow. One thing I think is important for our shareholders to understand though, with 6 rigs, we can be compounding production tremendously. And with 3 rigs, we start increasing production tremendously. So at the end of the day, the basic component is an increase in oil prices. And with an increase in oil prices, considering also our philosophy of maintaining prudence and discipline, we would start considering to increase our rig count. But it's not a simple question to answer.
Okay. The commodity markets are complicated. So I understand your guarded answer. I'll pass it back to the operator.
One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Nicholas Pope from Seaport Research.
I was hoping you guys could talk a little bit about the cadence of 2 rigs compared to the 1 frac crew, how you all expect those wells to kind of be -- kind of fleshed out over the quarters of the year and kind of how you are thinking about just that pace, the ongoing pace and kind of the wells that you're coming in with coming into the year with.
Yes. Mike, why don't you answer that question?
Absolutely. So Nick, of course, we're getting fairly efficient and more efficient every kind of week month as we go with our completion crews. And at high peak, we do drill a lot of wells and a lot of lateral foot per rig. So as we sit today, we are able to complete with one of these kind of in Tier 1 frac crews, dual fuel, very efficient. We're able to complete all of the wells behind kind of 2, call it, 2, 2.5 rigs. So as we mentioned, being a slightly front half weighted on CapEx on B and C, what drives that is we're able to complete it about a 2.5 rig cadence for the first half of the year and go to a 2-rig cadence in the latter half of the year. So that's the slightly front-end weighted. So you can imagine toward the back half of the year, you'll have a couple of little few day gaps in between the pads. Now as far as the ratability, which means as we're drilling these wells, as soon as we move off of the pad, we moved the frac crew in and complete them. So the pad sizes we're drilling in 2024 are very similar to the pad sizes we were drilling in '23. Hence, ratability per rig will be about the same as well as the completions and turn in lines.
Got it. That's helpful Switching to the financial side of things. I was hoping you all could talk a little bit about the decision to increase the dividend and how you weigh that cash going out the door for the dividend relative to the big term loan that you put in place in the summer kind of how you're thinking about what could be paid off, what you're allowed to pay down on that new debt instrument? Obviously, it's got a pretty big note with where interest rates are. So just kind of curious how you're balancing those cash options kind of outside of drilling right now.
Good question, Nick. And our basic answer there is the dividend relative to an annualized basis of $25 million is pretty de minimis. It doesn't really help us to do another $25 million on $1.2 billion paydown of the loan, but it gives us more value return for the shareholders. Our stock is depressed in our opinion, hence the reason we have a share buyback and why you see management in our last offering do $108 million of $155 million offering. So we're going to continue that program. And as far as buying back stock, when we negotiated our loan, we got permission to do all these things to increase our dividend, to do a share buyback and to have that flexibility. And we do have restrictions in terms of paydown of the debt. We have an amortization in place, but we also have restrictions that limit our ability to pay down without any makewhole provisions.
One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Jeff Robertson from Water Tower Research.
Mike, can you talk a little bit about reserve bookings in the capital program in 2023 and what you anticipate in 2024 and the kind of capital that's being spent on the program and how that compares to the last several years?
You bet, Jeff. Again, as we've slowed down the activity somewhat, we will be drilling a few less wells, obviously, somewhere in the 50 kind of wells drilled and about 60 turning lines this year. So again, when you look at the well performance of what we're drilling today compared to what we did in 2023, the well performance in '23 was across a broad spectrum of both blocks. So the wells that we're drilling today near what we kind of did in 2023 ex the few efficiencies and things that we're learning as we go along our way. So if you kind of take that forward into what our reserve booking will look like, you can kind of think of 2023 being an average of a 4-rig program -- so the growth that we saw in 2023, the adds, now the production roll-off was going to be less than the production that we're going to make in 2024. It's going to be close. So I think roughly the same roll-off with about half of the adds of reserves. And then, of course, we're always very conservative on our PUD bookings. So don't look for us to be a company that's going to go out and do 60%, 70% PUDs and only 30% proved. What we show is our proved reserves is closer to a 40% PUD more like 60% to 65% proved or [ PDP ]. So hopefully, that gives you a pretty clear picture of what 2024 will look like.
When you think of 2024 and the capital intensity of the asset base, is it fair to think that a 2-rig program over time will decrease the natural decline rate in the existing proved reserve base, and therefore, maybe decrease the capital intensity. We're trying to offset decline and maintain or grow production?
You bet, Jeff. And it's kind of 2 sides to that equation. One side is obviously the -- every well in the Permian Basin declines. So as you decline out over time, the decline rate reduces. So as the base production ages, the corporate decline will go down over time. And as we've reduced activity towards the second half of '23, that allows that base portion of the production to reduce its overall decline rate. So again, as you mentioned, it makes it easier to hold that production as well as to have a base that's declining less that you can grow off of as you deploy capital. The other piece on the efficiency front for the capital efficiency, kind of walk through that on Slide 10, where we walked through were [ CalStar ] today. And as we've mentioned, we're mainly focusing on co-developing the A and Lower Spraberry. They are our 2 highest rate of return in capital efficient zones as well as the cost for services and tangibles are going down as well as the efficiency of the drilling and completion side going up over time. So yes, do we see 2024 from a capital dollar utilized to what we get out of it being much more efficient than where we've been in the past, absolutely.
Will that start to show through in your -- in the DD&A rate, Mike or Steve?
Yes. So DD&A rate, and let me give just a little bit of clarity about DD&A rate and for HighPeak versus peers. So again, almost all of the growth that we've had at HighPeak has been through the drill bit. So by nature along there, you will have a higher DD&A rate. Typically, if you bought something, you would classify some large amount of that price being leasehold that gets distributed across all of your PUDs as well as your PDP. We'll only do it through the drill bit. We take a lot of our leasing costs and divide that only by the proved reserves for those wells. We've also built out life of the field infrastructure, and that's obviously very front-end weighted to the life of the company, and most all of those calls are in now and again, divided by just our proved reserves. And then you even go to the BOE mix that HighPeak has, although it's very, very valuable because it's very oily and very little gas that's got a very depressed pricing today, it's fewer BOEs. So again, if we were producing at the same kind of mix and generating the same EBITDA as our peers and had an 86,000 BOE a day kind of number to equate to the same EBITDA that again, just by itself, would reduce our DD&A down into the $18 range. And then as we continue to infill and drill these wells, that leasehold as well as the infrastructure dollars that are already allocated in our DD&A numbers today and will get diluted with reserves that have virtually none of those costs associated with it. So to your point, over time, as we continue to drill these wells, our DD&A will continue to trend down and look more similar to what your other operators in the area are at today.
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect