Evolution Petroleum (AMEX:EPM) held its third-quarter earnings conference call on Wednesday. Below is the complete transcript from the call.
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Summary
Evolution Petroleum reported fiscal Q3 2026 financials with total revenues of $20.2 million, down 11% year-over-year, due to regional natural gas pricing dislocations and one-time transportation adjustments.
Production stood at 6,700 boe per day, flat year-over-year despite weather-related disruptions and downtime, highlighting the portfolio's resilience.
The company completed additional mineral and royalty acquisitions in Louisiana, with active development expected to contribute to future production.
Challenges included $7.6 million in unrealized hedge losses due to crude oil price spikes and weather-related production disruptions.
The company maintained its dividend for the 51st consecutive quarter, reflecting confidence in future cash flow, supported by a diversified asset portfolio.
Management expects improved financial performance in Q4 2026 as temporary headwinds dissipate and recent acquisitions contribute more fully.
Full Transcript
OPERATOR
Good morning and welcome to Evolution Petroleum Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Release Conference call. All participants are in a listen-only mode. Please also note today's event is being recorded at this time. I would now like to turn the conference over to Brandy Hudson, the, Investor Relations Manager. Please go ahead.
Brandy Hudson (Investor Relations Manager)
Thank you. Welcome to Evolution Petroleum's fiscal Q3 2026 earnings call. I'm joined today by Kelly Lloyd, President and Chief Executive Officer, Mark Bunch, Chief Operating Officer and Ryan Stash, Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer.. We released our fiscal third quarter 2026 financial results after the market closed yesterday. Please refer to our earnings press release. For additional information containing these results. You can access our earnings release in the Investors section of our website. Please note that any statements and information provided in today's call speak only as of today's date, May 13, 2026 and any time sensitive information may not be accurate at a later date.. Our discussion today will contain forward looking statements of management's beliefs and assumptions based on currently available information. These forward looking statements are subject to the risks, assumptions and uncertainties as described in our SEC filings. Actual results may differ materially from those expected. We undertake no obligation to update any forward looking statements. During today's call we may discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures, including adjusted EBITDA and adjusted net income reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are included in our earnings release. Kelly will begin with opening remarks followed by Mark with an operational update and then Ryan will review the financial results. After our prepared comments, the management team will open the call for questions. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. If you wish to listen to a webcast replay of today's call, it will be available on the Investors section of our website. With that, I will turn the call over to Kelly.
Kelly Lloyd (President and Chief Executive Officer)
Thank you Brandy and good morning everyone. Before walking through the quarter, I want to step back and provide some context on where we are as a company and how we are thinking about the path forward. Over the last seven years we have deliberately reshaped Evolution's portfolio, expanding beyond our legacy asset base into a more diversified capital efficient platform designed to generate durable free cash flow through commodity cycles. That has meant adding long life low decline assets such as Jonah and Barnett, expanding our non-operating working interest base through acquisitions like TexMex,, and most recently building a minerals and royalty platform that we believe can become a durable and growing component of our portfolio. The common thread across these decisions is the same building a business with long life assets, modest capital requirements, sustainable free cash flow and the ability to support our dividend while compounding per share value over time. That is the framework through which we evaluate every capital allocation decision and it is the lens through which I would encourage investors to evaluate our results, including in quarters like this one where reported results were impacted by items that do not reflect the underlying earnings power of the business. With that context, let me address the fiscal third quarter directly. This was a more challenging period than the second quarter and I want to be transparent about what drove the variance. A combination of isolated and largely non operational items weighed on our reported results, including regional natural gas pricing dislocations that impacted realized prices at Jonah and Barnett, a $1.2 million one time prior period transportation adjustment at Delhi related to changes made by the operator dating back to 2024, and weather related production disruptions across multiple fields during the January ice storms. These are not structural issues. They don't reflect any change in the underlying quality of our assets or our cost structure or our strategy. These were largely timing related and onetime in nature and we expect underlying performance to normalize as they roll off setting those items aside, what stands out to me is how the portfolio held up despite those headwinds. Production was essentially flat year over year at 6,700 boe per day, a result we view as a meaningful sign of resilience given the level of weather related disruption and downtime we experienced in the quarter. Contributions from our new acquisitions helped offset downtime and natural declines at certain assets, which is exactly the kind of portfolio level stability we have been working to build. This reflects the benefits of diversification across assets, commodities and operating partners. That diversification is not accidental. It is the direct result of the capital allocation discipline we have applied consistently over multiple years on our mineral and royalty program. We continued to make progress during the quarter. We completed two additional Louisiana Mineral and Royalty acquisitions targeting the Haynesville and Bossier shales, bringing the total consideration for our Louisiana minerals to approximately 5 million. These assets are being actively developed by operators in the area. operators in the area. Wells are being drilled and completed and we expect contributions from these positions to begin building as that activity translates into production. All of that to say the financial contribution from our minerals platform is still in early stages. However, the activity we see from operators gives us confidence that the production ramp we underwrote when we made these acquisitions is right on track. We will provide more specific updates as those results come through. As we move into the fiscal fourth quarter, we expect the picture to look meaningfully different. The prior period Delhi adjustment is behind us. The February gas dislocation at Jonah was a singular weather event.. Differentials are returning to more normal levels. The TexMex workover program is in its final phase and we expect that asset to be a more meaningful contributor as that work is completed. The combination of these factors alongside the continued ramp of our minerals and royalty assets gives us confidence that the fourth quarter will better reflect the underlying earnings power of this business. We expect to generate robust cash flow in the fourth quarter and beyond, which reinforces our continued confidence in the dividend. In addition, we believe the current commodity price environment provides incremental upside from here. On May 11th, our board declared our 51st consecutive quarterly dividend and 16th consecutive dividend at $0.12 per share, a milestone that reflects the durability of our underlying cash generation across a range of commodity environments. Our capital allocation framework has not changed Protect the balance sheet, support a dividend we believe is sustainable through cycles, and deploy capital where we see compelling risk adjusted returns. As always, dividends are paid at levels that are meant to be sustainable given the current outlook for multiple years to come. This portfolio has always been designed to withstand any ill effects of the odd difficult quarter, and it is this same framework that gives us confidence in what we expect to be a strong finish to fiscal 2026. Before I hand it over to Mark for more detail on our operations, I want to leave you with one final thought looking at the broader picture for commodity prices. In March of 2026, WTI oil prices reached their highest levels since 2022 and remain at elevated, although highly backwardated risk premium levels. The significant increase in forward oil commodity prices as of March 31st resulted in an unrealized loss on the mark to market value of our hedges for the quarter. Additionally, the large non cash loss associated with unrealized hedge losses was based off of a crude oil strip at the end of March where spot prices for WTI were over $100 per barrel. No one knows where WTI will be at 6:30, 2026, but where we sit today, we think that it is likely that the unrealized losses will show a reversal in the next quarter, although our unrealized gains and losses on hedges will fluctuate as forward commodity prices change. I sometimes think that people forget that selling oil for higher prices than our hedges is a really good thing. The current oil price environment will provide incremental upside in the fourth quarter as we expect to benefit from the higher pricing to the extent that prices exceed our applicable oil hedges. Additionally, our NGLs, which are priced as a percentage of crude oil, remain unhedged and should receive the full benefit of pricing as far as our natural gas hedges are concerned, we expect to realize a benefit as our hedges are priced at levels higher than current strip pricing. With that, I'll turn the call over to Mark.
Mark Bunch (Chief Operating Officer)
Thank you Kelly and good morning everyone. I will focus my remarks on key operational highlights from the quarter and encourage listeners to review our earnings, press release and filings for additional details across our asset base. Overall, our operations continued to demonstrate steady base performance across the portfolio during the quarter. The results were impacted by the weather related disruptions and one time items Kelly described. Now onto our assets at our Haynesville and Bossier Shales, we continue to build scale and are prioritizing value on wells that are either currently producing or expected to be producing within one year of purchase. To that end, we expect 23 wells to be brought online and meaningfully contribute to revenue and cash flow in the fiscal fourth quarter. At SCOOP/STACK, production from the mineral and royalty interest acquired in August 2025 modestly contributed to overall volumes during the quarter. Additionally, there are 7 gross wells in progress and 12 gross wells on production that we are still awaiting first production and revenue data. At Shavaru, production increased year over year reflecting the benefit of wells brought online over the past 12 months. The January winter storm and gas interference on the wells with ESPs decreased production by a 30 net boe per day quarter over quarter. Subsequent to quarter end, we converted one well from ESP to rod pump. Currently, all but one of our seven wells has now been converted to rod pumps. We continue to advance permitting for the next six wells. Expect to have those permits in hand before the end of fiscal 2026. At Tex Mex, oil production increased quarter over quarter due to a successful workover program at the end of the prior quarter. However, January winter storms not only impacted production but also caused power outages and surface equipment damages that required repairs. This led to higher expenses in the quarter. We expect Tex Mex to continue to improve subsequent to quarter end repair. We began a new workover program which we expect will increase production by an additional 100 net boe per day by the end of fiscal Q4. At Delhi, revenues were impacted by the one time prior period transportation adjustment Kelly described earlier, which is now behind us. The January winter storm outages impacted production for six days during the quarter and the CO2 recycle compressor which is down for most of the prior quarter, remained down for 40 days during fiscal Q3, negatively affecting production. These issues resolved during the quarter. Despite this, field level profitability remains strong supported by lower operating costs, reflecting the continued benefit of the cessation of CO2 purchases that concluded late in fiscal Q3 of last year. We expect production volumes to improve as operational stability continues. At Barnett, quarterly production was heavily impacted by the winter storm as well, resulting in a decline of approximately 160 boe per the impacts carried into February and restored by March. Across the portfolio, production was heavily impacted by the January winter storm and other downtime, accounting for over 300 net boe per day. However, these have been resolved during the quarter and we remain focused on maintaining operational flexibility, optimizing our cost structure and deploying capital where returns are most attractive. With that, I will turn it over to Ryan.
Ryan Stash (Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer)
Thank you Mark and good morning everyone. As Brandy mentioned earlier, we released our earnings yesterday which contains more information on our results for today. I'd like to go through our fiscal third quarter financial highlights. In fiscal Q3 we had total revenues of $20.2 million down 11% year over year. The decrease in revenues was primarily driven by an 11% decline average realized equivalent prices partially offset by a slight increase in production volumes. The decline in pricing reflected regional natural gas pricing dislocations at Jonah and Barnett during the quarter, but especially in the month of February, as well as 1.2 million in one time prior period. Transportation adjustments at Delhi related to a new marketing contract entered into by the operator and dating back to December 2024. Net loss for the quarter was $8.9 million or $0.26 per diluted share compared to a net loss of 2.2 million or $0.07 per diluted share in a year ago period. This quarter was negatively impacted by $7.6 million in unrealized hedge losses due to the spike in crude oil prices with the war in Iran. Excluding the impact of selected items, including the unrealized hedge losses, adjusted net loss for the quarter was 2.9 million compared to 0.8 million in adjusted net income in the year ago period. Adjusted EBITDA was 3.1 million compared to 7.4 million in the prior year quarter, reflecting lower revenues due to historically unfavorable differentials, production downtime at many of our assets and realized losses on derivative contracts. More specifically, as it relates to differentials in Jonah, the winter differentials were the worst since we have owned the asset and the lowest in the past 10 years due to the warmest winter on record for the West Coast. Going forward, we would expect differentials at Jonah and our other natural gas assets to return to more historical levels. We estimate that the winter differentials negatively impacted our realized price per BOE by approximately $3.39 as compared to the prior year period. Lease operating expenses improved to 13 million or $21.49 per boe compared to $22.32 per boe in the prior year quarter. The decrease was primarily driven by reduced ad valorem taxes at Barnett Shale and the continued benefit of the cessation of CO2 purchases at Delhi, partially offset by the addition of the TexMex properties and incremental workover activity during the quarter. The addition of our royalty assets in Oklahoma and Louisiana have also contributed to higher margins and lower operating costs for our asset base. On the hedging front, we have continued to add additional hedges to comply with our credit facility covenants. Our ongoing goal remains to reduce downside commodity price risk and protect cash flow for our shareholder return strategy while preserving the maximum potential upside. This strategy can result in realized and unrealized losses on our hedges in some periods, such as the current quarter, but benefit us in other periods and will provide more predictable and stable cash flows over time. Turning to the balance sheet, as of March 31, 2026, cash on hand totaled $2.6 million. Borrowings under our credit facilities stood at 56 point with 0.8 million in letters of credit outstanding. Total liquidity including cash and available borrowing capacity was approximately 10.3 million, providing us with the flexibility to support our ongoing operations, capital allocation priorities and selective growth initiatives. During the quarter, we paid dividends totaling 4.3 million. As previously announced, the Board declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.12 per share, reflecting our continued commitment to returning capital to shareholders. Overall, our asset base and balance sheet strength position us to continue returning capital to shareholders while selectively deploying capital into opportunities that we expect to be accretive over the long term, just as we have done over the past seven years. I'll now hand it back over to Kelly for closing comments.
Kelly Lloyd (President and Chief Executive Officer)
Thanks, Ryan. To sum it up, fiscal Q3 was a quarter shaped by temporary headwinds rather than structural weakness. The portfolio held up well at the asset level, our minerals and royalty strategy continued to advance and we maintained the dividend for the 51st consecutive quarter, which we believe speaks to the durability of our underlying cash flow. As these onetime items roll off and our recent acquisitions contribute more fully, we expect our results to better reflect the earnings power we have built in this business in the fiscal Q4 and thereafter. We look forward to updating you on our progress. With that, I'll turn it over to the operator to begin the Q and A session.
OPERATOR
Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touchtone phone. 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 the question, please press star then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Our first question comes from Jeff Robertson with Water Tower Research. Please go ahead.
Jeff Robertson (Equity Analyst)
Thank you. Good morning, Mark at Delhi with the new crude marketing agreement that the operator entered into. Can you talk about how much flexibility evolution has to and whether you want to do any, as you alluded to in the press release, to do anything different with respect to marketing your equity production from that field?
Ryan Stash (Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer)
Hey, yeah, Jeff, I'm going to flip that actually. I know you asked me, but I'm going to flip it over to Ryan to answer. Yes. So that's part of the thing we've actually been kind of actively looking at and we do actually have a lot of flexibility in the JOA to take the production in kind, which we're actively looking at now. The one point I'll make on the actual changes is obviously it was a move from Denbury to Exxon. The ultimate contract with Plain hasn't changed that much other than they're now trucking where in the past they had a pipeline that, that went down. So that's really the biggest difference in kind of charges. But to directly answer your question, we're definitely looking at that and it's something that we're actively considering and we think we probably can do a little bit better than what they are in the market.
Jeff Robertson (Equity Analyst)
Ryan, in the second quarter and going forward, do you expect the GPT charges to be similar to what they were last year as opposed to obviously the. I'm sorry, in previous quarters as opposed to what they were in the. In your second fiscal quarter?
Ryan Stash (Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer)
Yeah, I mean In gathering there's, you know, there's nothing that's been out of the ordinary that I'm aware of in the past quarter. I mean those have been relatively constant. I mean there are some contracts we mentioned in the past, like you know, Barnett that is tied a little bit to natural gas pricing, so it will move a bit but overall it's more volume driven. Right. And so I wouldn't expect those to vary more much from his historical.
Jeff Robertson (Equity Analyst)
Can you talk about what kind of communications you're having from your operators with respect to any initiatives they might have to go out and do short cycle workover type projects or whether there are opportunities to bring wells back online to take advantage of the high oil prices we have. At least for next month. At least the next couple of months.
Mark Bunch (Chief Operating Officer)
Yeah. So Jeff, this is Mark and you know, yeah, our operators are all working towards that. In fact, we actually mentioned one in particular, you know, Tex Mex, they really accelerated their second round of workovers to bring things online in New Mexico largely because the prices went up. And so the timing was really good. So we speeded that up somewhat. So yeah, everybody's looking at, at making sure that they keep as much production, oil production on as possible.
Kelly Lloyd (President and Chief Executive Officer)
And Jeff, hey, this is Kelly. I'll just add on Mark's right across the board we're seeing it. And look, these are simple projects that are fast, right? Drilling takes longer to get on production. But if you do a workover that takes a week and things are back up producing, we evaluate these, these are very, very high return projects that can get done quickly and can be meaningful. So we've seen a lot of guys try to do that as much as they can. In Hamilton Dome, you're seeing activity increase
Jeff Robertson (Equity Analyst)
really across the board. And then lastly, before getting back in the queue, Kelly, can you speak to the state of both the non op market and the minerals market just given the volatility in commodity prices and what that means for trying to value transactions?
Kelly Lloyd (President and Chief Executive Officer)
Yeah, you know, it's interesting on the non-op side it's, I mean, I would almost argue it's kind of a dearth of availability. Like there isn't a whole lot that we've seen out there on the mineral side, again, you know, working with some folks that we, you know, have a whole lot of confidence and trust in, we've been able to do sort of, you know, if you want to call it customized, but deals we put together along with them and go execute on and minerals just in general, especially when you're able to build them in little onesies and twosies like we have been, they're more liquid and we can find real dislocations and opportunities which like I said, we and the folks we're working with have been doing a great job of finding those and we expect to see that continuing. There will be a flip but you know, at some point the non-op will come back in vogue and we'll start seeing better returns. But when you only have a couple deals and a bunch of people bidding on them, it just hasn't in the last couple quarters it really hasn't been super attractive. Thanks, I'll jump back in the queue. Thanks Jeff.
PO FRAT
Our next question comes from PO FRAT with Alliance Global Partners. Please go ahead. Thanks for taking my call. I'm trying to figure out what your run rate is for the June quarter. Right now you reported, you know, 6700 of boe. You talked about 300 boe of impact on production from storms and other things. Are you above 7,000 right now? It's a run rate for the June quarter or can you just help me calibrate that?
Kelly Lloyd (President and Chief Executive Officer)
Sure. Hey po, this is Kelly. Thanks for calling. Yeah, I think we made it clear I don't want to speak out of school or Ryan will slap me, but the 300 is almost substantially all back online and was starting to get there before the end of the quarter. And if there was anything left over, it's pretty much there now. We are well underway in our progress on adding about 100 net boe per day in Tex Mex. And we also have, you know, and I'll be a little cautious here, we have 12 wells in our royalty properties alone in the scoop stack that we know are on production. They have been completed. We just don't have data yet. Again in Oklahoma it can take a while. So we expect to get data where we don't want to aggregate. If we have no data, you don't want to. We have type curves but you need to actually get data before you put it on there. So we've got 12 wells that we're a part of there that we're going to get. We expect to get data on and be able to include in our fourth quarter results. Same thing with our Haynesville and Bossier shale assets. We've got 24 wells that we expect to get data on and have production from during the fourth quarter. We know that at least 20 of them have already been completed and others are sort of in process. So I can't really quantify that number. I mean I could guess off my type curve poe, but that wouldn't be appropriate. So again, we've got the 300 back online. We've got another 100 we fully expect and is in progress of working towards that Tex Mex plus additionals from new wells that we don't have data on that we're either already producing or getting there very shortly.
Ryan Stash (Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer)
So yeah, it's probably, this is Ryan. It's probably helpful just sometimes to remind you guys on how from the non-op perspective how it works. You know, we, you know, there are some wells in some areas we have real time data, but certainly not all across our portfolio. We won't probably really know true April production for another week or two until we actually start getting our revenue statements in from the month of April. Right. So as we sit today, you know, we still don't have actual revenue statements yet for April production. We have, we do know of some areas obviously, as Kelly said, and we do know things that have returned to normal, but we won't know for a fact like what production actually was for April yet.
PO FRAT
Yeah. And then, and from the royalty side, Poe, it's even more delayed just because you had your further removed from the operator. So those, almost those like in Oklahoma can be, you know, somewhat delayed, like by 180 days. So it's, you know, where we get information, we start applying and accruing for it, but sometimes we don't know about it until it actually comes on. Okay. And I, you know, I'm not going to hold you to any guesses, but is there, you know, it sounds like the Scoopstack you might get some data maybe two months would potentially hit the, hit the production for the June quarter and then the Haynesville and the Bossier is, you know, probably, you know, first quarter next year or the September quarter. But I guess a short question. What could potentially be the impact from Scoopstack if you do get the data in the, in the June quarter? Is it 50, 25? You know, sort of just. I'm not going to hold you to any guesses that you make, but just, I'm just trying to calibrate. I understand and, but I mean I, I don't think I'm comfortable speculating on that. Okay. I'm not going to beat the dead horseman. You talked about Chevro that, you know, the permits are potentially in place for the next six wells or the next pad there by the end of June. Do you think the operator there will pull the trigger in these in the September quarter or is it more, you know, December quarter with potential impact in calendar 27?
Kelly Lloyd (President and Chief Executive Officer)
So as you know, the operator there has undergone a merger and it is our understanding that they are prioritizing assets and coming up with scheduling. We're working with them closely and I would just, it's just too early to say at point, this exact point in time. But we are working on that and trying to get things scheduled as quickly as we can and to understand from our own, you know, capital needs exactly when this is going to work out. So I, you know, I don't want to, I don't want to speculate and answer for them. So I'm going to wait for that. We will update you when we know. How about that?
PO FRAT
Yeah, I guess though from a conceptual standpoint, those are shorter term, you know, shorter lead time. They're permitted. There's, you know, generally you can drill a lot quicker there than you can in other places, but. Okay. And then on Delhi, is there any legal, you know, recourse that you have? I mean, this is, you know, there's quite a delay between the time that the contract went in place and then, you know, it hit the quarter. Did I read in between the lines that you may have legal recourse?
Kelly Lloyd (President and Chief Executive Officer)
I'm officially not going to answer that.
PO FRAT
Okay, I think that's it. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thanks. Really appreciate it. Both. Thank you.
OPERATOR
Our next question comes from John Blair with Ascend Wealth Advisors. Please go ahead.
John Blair
Thanks. There's no L in there. That's Christmas time. Thank you. It's Bair Blair. Thanks. Appreciate your taking my call. And you touched on a number of aspects of my questions. Is it fair to say that add back, I mean this was a quarter, pardon the pun, but a really perfect storm. Right. All four, five of your areas impacted here, your comments are that the flow rates are back and so I'm just wondering, do you have any, was there any impact that is known as to flow rates or any reservoir damage, anything like that while these wells were shut in?
Mark Bunch (Chief Operating Officer)
No, this is. There weren't any damages. This is the typical thing we have happen in the wintertime when we have bad weather. So pardon me getting over a cold but you know, we do it like typically we see at Barnett, which is. It's the one that's slowest to come back, but it comes back. It just takes it a few weeks to get back, you know, up to full rate.
Kelly Lloyd (President and Chief Executive Officer)
I mean. Yeah. And back to your perfect storm. We had one area where a lightning strike blew up a tank battery. Right. I mean, yeah, again, all covered by insurance, all fixed but you know, caused downtime for sure. And then one thing, John, and this is Kelly, by the way. Thanks for calling. On the west coast we talk about some of the impacts of differentials from our Jonah gas and how far from normal it was. I mean, Ryan talked about it a little bit. I mean once in 100 years plus kind of winter.
Ryan Stash (Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer)
What did they draw on the west coast for gas, Ryan? I mean it was probably about 60, 65 BCF, which is pretty much the lowest I can find for a long period of time. Right.
John Blair
I was going to say it went the other way. I think not long after you purchased that property. So that was kind of another follow on question. I was going to say, okay, so you got impacted because of warmer winter, but if it's a more hotter or more severe summer and there's higher demand then this could flip the other way. Is that a fair way of looking at it?
Kelly Lloyd (President and Chief Executive Officer)
Yeah, for sure. So Ryan and I were doing some research on this on the west coast, right? It's not just California. Let's look at the whole west coast. When you have a good snowpack, right, A nice wet cold winter. In the summer months when it's hot, you get a lot of hydro. Hydro is the cheapest, best, easiest way for them to generate electricity. And it can be, you know, in a wet, cold winter it can be up to 50% of the power in some of those areas when you have no snowpack essentially and you're expecting no hydro. Ryan, I think your research showed it can use an extra 1.1 plus kind of BCF a day of natural gas usage. So there will be a bounce back effect that's to our favor on this during the summer.
Ryan Stash (Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer)
Yeah, no, we think there's definitely potential for the differentials that we see right now in the summer months might be overstating kind of the potential high storage that we're going into right now in the injection season. So with kind of a normal to warm summer, although snowpack could set up for hopefully a little bit better demand on the summer heating, sorry summer cooling.
John Blair
And from what we're seeing out there now, California's in a pretty bad state given they have to import just about everything it seems whether it's energy from Asia since they've run off the industry internally, their water and their electric. So they're kind of in a bad spot there as far as I'm.
Ryan Stash (Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer)
Yeah, and I don't see it. We talk about elevated storage there. I mean honestly they have so few days of coverage. I mean just happened this, this particular winter there was no sort of gas on gas competition because they didn't hardly use any gas. So it goes away and switches very quickly. It's very light storage relative to usage there. As a matter of fact, I would say out of all the regions of the country it has the least sort of storage relative to usage. So yeah, I mean they've got around, you know, assuming they wouldn't inject, which they will, they've got generally 30 days or less of storage based on typical demand out there, which is very low. They've also had storage come out of the system right over the past five years which has Kind of increased the volatility as you mentioned, John. I mean you know we're kind of, we're not benefiting from this winter, but we've definitely been a beneficiary of enterprise saying due to this volatility since we found the asset, we can't complain that much.
John Blair
Going back to Dalle for just a moment, is there any anticipation that that CO2 purchases will need to be resumed or ramped up anytime soon that could be impactful?
Mark Bunch (Chief Operating Officer)
John, this is Mark and no, they don't have any plans currently to purchase any additional CO2 and honestly with the reservoir work that we've done, we actually think CO2 utilization is probably improved by dropping the amount of code CO2 that's being put in the system. So we don't have any disagreements with it and it helps our operating costs
John Blair
A little disconcerting as I think it was referenced in an earlier caller there questioner, the kind of lack of communication that you've had with or by the operator. So hopefully in all areas you'll be able to somehow improve that communication and updates, you know, so that you're a little bit better aware what, what's going on and what to anticipate. I realize that as a non op it's perhaps a little more difficult, but still.
Mark Bunch (Chief Operating Officer)
Well we, John, just, just FYI on that, just so we really actually have a very good relationship with Exxon in my opinion for I've worked with Exxon before and it's, and you know, it's tough because there are, they're a big company and you know, big companies do different things differently. But we actually have a good relationship with them I think and they do talk to us. It's just, you know, they've had some difficult maintenance issues going on and you know, we treat them pretty much like the rest of our partners. And actually I'd say they're, they're definitely not the worst. So that's, you know, which is a big plus because I was kind of afraid they could have been. But we've been really happy with them, what they're doing.
John Blair
Okay, well that's good to hear. And I suppose that this field is kind of somewhat off their radar in the grand scheme of things for their size and so forth. So thanks very much for taking the calls. Thanks John.
Nicholas Pope
Our next question comes from Nicholas Pope with Roland. Please go ahead.
Kelly Lloyd (President and Chief Executive Officer)
Morning guys. Good morning. Nick. Kelly, you, I think you made a comment that the non op, the market for kind of non op assets has been, you know, a little tight right now. So I thought it was kind of encouraging. There's a. That you sold, was it 3.3 million of stacks non ops assets post, post quarter end. I'm curious, can I give you a little color on that? Yeah, that's exactly what I wanted. So go ahead. Yeah. So just to be clear, that is, it is scoop stack but it was from our minerals package. Right. If you recall, we paid 17 million before post effective date. What was the ultimate adjusted price? 6.16.1, 16.1 million for that package of royalties. But you know when you factor in the difference between effective date and closing date cash flows and we placed the vast majority of that on all the stuff we kept. Right. There were some locations that were again they could absolutely be viable home run candidates but they were further out in time. And so when we put most of our valuation work we front loaded that. So if you take that evaluation, which again we think has borne out to be a very good high return project at 16.1, if you knock another 3.2, 5. 3.3 off of that, it's an absolute home run. And so what do you do with that capital? Well, you go try to redeploy it, right. Sort of high grade that portfolio from stuff that again we think is good, it has value, clearly we sold it. But into stuff that is going to be completed in our opinion more near term and begin to add cash flows in the near term. So that was the sort of process behind that. Let's see if we can put some of these potentially longer dated to be completed stuff, flip that into stuff that we think is going to be more nearer term at also very attractive rates which we were buying at. So. So that was the process there, Nick.
Nicholas Pope
I mean I think it makes total sense. I mean it's. I think you've been active in the past at divestitures and it sounds like maybe the non op market is a bit of a seller's market right now just with the how quickly commodity prices have moved.
Kelly Lloyd (President and Chief Executive Officer)
Is there other opportunities? I mean is that something. I know you are always active kind of looking at your own assets and high grade and stuff. I mean is there other opportunities you think might be possible to divest here in the near term with some non op stuff? There are for sure, yes, there are a couple that I would say need
Jeff Robertson (Equity Analyst)
to sort of be seasoned a little more, but that could be very impactful. And then there's always little stuff on the margin that you could flip around with. So if I were modeling I probably wouldn't account for it. But it would call that, as the Cajun say, Lanyap. Right, got it. All right, Kelly, I appreciate the time. Thanks for the question. Thank you, Nick. Up next, we have a follow up from Jeff Robertson with Water Tower Research. Please go ahead.
Ryan Stash (Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer)
Thank you. Ryan, on Capex, do you have much visibility into the the rest of calendar 26 from your operating partners? No, I mean I think at this point, you know, it's going to be probably that we don't really own the scoop stack which is a majority as you know, kind of our capex other than Chevro. And at that, you know, we're not getting a lot of drill schedules unfortunately from them and we're seeing afes and activities but we don't have a ton of insight there as to how much capital. So we're not budgeting much more than we've probably spent this year right now. You know, we have, we'll come out with our official kind of 27 budget here probably on our next fiscal 27. That is on our next call. But at this point, no, we haven't seen a lot of activity or that we would know of really on the non op side right now. I will say as you know, obviously the activity we've talked about on the mineral side, I mean that doesn't impact our cap capital budget, which is the nice thing about it. So all those wells coming on for scoop Stack, you know, are not going to impact our capital budget. Thank you. I guess. And to that note, the mineral interest production that you talk about that should come on near term, should have a high margin addition to cash flow. Yep, absolutely. And yeah, we're excited about it. But it's again we're going to gain more info this quarter and even more going forward as we get more wells being completed over time. So again, very excited about that.
Jeff Robertson (Equity Analyst)
Thank you.
OPERATOR
Our next question is a follow up with John Baer from Ascend Wealth Advisors. Please go ahead.
John Blair
Thanks for taking the follow up here. Just a quick question. Are you looking at any adjustments or any ways that you can, you know, adjust your hedging program given the current elevated prices and whatever, is there any way that you can kind of high grade that? And my personal take is these prices. Even if, you know, some solution to the Persian Gulf Straits of Horboz thing was resolved, you got a long lead time to get all that cargo out of there. So I know the market response would probably try to reflect it. But given where we're at right now and all those uncertainties, are you looking at any doing any high grading of that catching program. Yeah, John, this is Ryan. So, you know, unfortunately in the near term, right, we definitely have looked at restructuring, but most of the restructuring opportunities would be things like converting our collars to swaps, which isn't really that beneficial to create upside given where the prices are. It'd be too expensive to take a lot of those swaps out or just take them off. What we are doing is we've taken the opportunity to start adding hedges in calendar 27. So we're able to get 70 plus swaps and floors in some instances with higher callers. And so those, those prices into calendar 27 are pretty attractive.
Ryan Stash (Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer)
So to us, you know, adding hedges out in the future at good prices is really what we're doing for the most part with this kind of spike. You know, the other point I'd make is, you know, while we do have, you know, we're not completely hedged out on our crude, right. So we've still got, you know, for this kind of our fiscal fourth quarter, at least 30% unhedged on the crude side, all of our NGO. So we definitely have upside there from, you know, the run and kind of the heavier parts of the barrel for the ngl. So we're still going to see some of that upside, as Kelly kind of mentioned in his comments. But you know, really near term there's not a lot of restructuring opportunities. We're just going to take advantage of adding stuff at 27. Very good. I think one of the big takeaways from what's been going on is domestic production. I think globally you're going to be looking at more cautiously at where you source your crude from. Right. So I think from that standpoint, being a domestic producer should be given a little bit of a premium perhaps, I don't know, but just kind of food for thought there.
John Blair
Thanks again for taking the question. Hi, John. Really appreciate your interest in your call and we agree. Yeah, I think good old USA is the place to be. So very good.
OPERATOR
This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the call back over to Kelly Lloyd for any closing remarks.
Kelly Lloyd (President and Chief Executive Officer)
Yes, thank you. And thank you everybody for attending as we move forward. Like I said, we're excited about the future future here. So thanks again for your interest.
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