Comstock Resources, Inc. (NYSE:CRK) Q1 2023 Earnings Conference Call May 3, 2023 11:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Jay Allison – Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Roland Burns – President and Chief Financial Officer

Dan Harrison – Chief Operating Officer

Ron Mills – Vice President-Finance and Investor Relations

Conference Call Participants

Derrick Whitfield – Stifel

Jacob Roberts – Tudor Pickering Holt & Company

Bertrand Donnes – Truist

Charles Meade – Johnson Rice

Phillips Johnston – Capital One Security

Umang Choudhary – Goldman Sachs

Paul Diamond – Citi

Leo Mariani – Roth

Operator

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to Comstock Resources First Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder today's call is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the conference over to your host Mr. Jay Allison, Chairman and CEO. Please go ahead.

Jay Allison

Perfect, thank you, and good morning everyone. I like to welcome all of you to the Comstock Resources first quarter 2023 financial and operating results conference call. You can view a slide presentation during or after this call by going to our website at www.comstockresources.com and downloading the quarterly results presentation. There you'll find a presentation entitled first quarter 2023 results.

I am Jay Allison, Chief Executive Officer of Comstock. With me is, Roland Burns, our President and Chief Financial Officer; Dan Harrison, our Chief Operating Officer; and Ron Mills, our VP of Finance and Investor Relations. If you'll flip over to Slide 2, please refer to Slide 2 in our presentation and note that our discussions today will include forward-looking statements within the meaning of securities laws. While we believe the expectations and such statements to be reasonable, there could be no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct.

If you'll slip over to Slide 3, I want to kind of address the issues. I've read I think all of the analyst reports that have been published and understand the concerns. None are new concerns. We understand them. If you look at where oil is today, plus yesterday, it's down $7. If you look at where natural gas is, so yesterday and today it is down $0.20. So, we all know that we're experiencing pressure with low natural gas prices currently in the short-term. However, we're extremely positive on the outlook for natural gas in the future. Looking ahead several years we recognize the growing need for natural gas around the world. Our long-term goal is to be a significant supplier to the growing LNG market that is developing several hundred miles from our Haynesville shale operations, including our emerging Western Haynesville area. Around the world today over $1 trillion of natural gas infrastructure is being built. Over the next five years in the United States, we see more than $100 billion worth of new LNG plants being operational.