Highpeak Energy, Inc. (NASDAQ:HPK) Q4 2023 Earnings Conference Call March 7, 2024 11:00 AM ET
Company Participants
Steven Tholen - CFO
Jack Hightower - CEO
Michael Hollis - President
Conference Call Participants
John White - ROTH MKM Capital
Nicholas Pope - Seaport Research Partners
Jeff Robertson - Water Tower Research
Operator
Good day and thank you for standing by, and welcome to HighPeak Energy 2023 Fourth Quarter Earnings Call. [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.
Steven Tholen
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 Steven 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.
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, 2023 was absolutely a transformational year for HighPeak. Just to 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 two 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, the year where we focus on free cash flow generation, paydown of debt, and returning value to our shareholders.