Antero Resources Corporation (NYSE:AR) Q2 2023 Earnings Conference Call July 27, 2023 11:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Brendan Krueger - Vice President-Finance

Paul Rady - Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President

Michael Kennedy - Chief Financial Officer

Dave Cannelongo - Senior Vice President, Liquids Marketing & Transportation

Justin Fowler - Senior Vice President, Natural Gas Marketing

Conference Call Participants

Arun Jayaram - JPMorgan

David Deckelbaum - TD Cowen

Subhasish Chandra - The Benchmark Company

Gregg Brody - Bank of America

Kevin MacCurdy - Pickering Energy Partners

Nitin Kumar - Mizuho Securities

Umang Choudhary - Goldman Sachs

Operator

Greetings, and welcome to the Antero Resources Second Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator Instructions] And as a reminder, this conference is being recorded.

It is now my pleasure to introduce to you, Mr. Brendan Krueger, VP of Finance. Thank you, Mr. Brendan, you may begin.

Brendan Krueger

Thank you. Good morning, thank you for joining us for Antero's second quarter 2023 investor conference call. We'll spend a few minutes going through the financial and operating highlights, and then we'll open it up for Q&A.

I would also like to direct you to the homepage of our website at www.anteroresources.com, where we have provided a separate earnings call presentation that will be reviewed during today's call.

Today's call may contain certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to our earnings press release for important disclosures regarding such measures, including reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP financial measures.

Joining me on the call today are Paul Rady, Chairman, CEO and President; Michael Kennedy, CFO, Dave Cannelongo, Senior Vice President of Liquids Marketing & Transportation and Justin Fowler, Senior Vice President of Natural Gas Marketing.

I will now turn the call over to Paul.

Paul Rady

Thank you, Brendan. I'll start my comments on slide number three titled, Drilling and Completion Efficiencies. After a record-breaking first quarter operationally, the strong momentum continued in the second quarter. Completion stages averaged more than 11 per day in the second quarter, a 40% improvement compared to the 2022 average and over a 90% increase from 2019 levels. Drill Outs, which are the process of drilling out the plugs in each stage of the horizontal portion of the well, exhibited the same success during the quarter.

Drill-outs averaged over 4,000 feet per day during the second quarter, up 9% from the 2022 average and over 50% increase from the 2019 levels. Faster drill outs and completion times have resulted in significantly shorter cycle times as shown on the bottom of the page. Since 2019, our cycle times have decreased by 65% an averaged just 151 days in the second quarter.