Thank you, Britney. Good morning, and welcome to Viper Energy's fourth quarter 2025 conference call.

During our call today, we will reference an updated investor presentation, which can be found on Viper's website. Representing Viper today are Kaes Van't Hof, CEO, and Austen Gilfillian, President.

During this conference call, the participants may make certain forward-looking statements relating to the company's financial condition, results of operations, plans, objectives, future performance, and businesses. We caution you that actual results could differ materially from those that are indicated in these forward-looking statements due to a variety of factors.

Information concerning these factors can be found in the company's filings with the SEC. In addition, we will make reference to certain non-GAAP measures.

The reconciliations to the appropriate GAAP measures can be found in our earnings release issued yesterday afternoon. I will now turn the call over to Kaes.

Thank you, Chip. Welcome, everyone, and thank you for listening to Viper's fourth quarter 2025 conference call.

The fourth quarter capped a transformational year for Viper, highlighted by more than $8 billion of mineral acquisitions and meaningful growth in both absolute and per share metrics. Year-over-year, we grew our Permian Basin acreage by nearly 2.5 times and our oil production per share by 7%.

Activity across our Permian acreage remains strong, supported by Diamondback and third-party operators focused on development of long-lateral, high-quality inventory. Looking ahead, we have initiated average daily production guidance for the full year 2026 that implies mid-single-digit organic production growth from our Q4 2025 exit rate.

The Diamondback relationship continues to be strategic and meaningful to Viper's growth, even after two significant acquisitions in 2025 and greater exposure to other leading operators in the Permian Basin. Beyond visible near-term growth, Viper is better positioned today than we ever have been in terms of the scale, longevity, and overall quality of our asset base and future inventory.

Another significant achievement was the work we did on our balance sheet. Following our non-Permian divestiture, we fully repaid our $500 million term loan and outstanding revolver balance, resulting in pro forma net debt of roughly $1.6 billion, just over one turn of leverage.

Now turning to return of capital. Our board approved a 15% increase to our base dividend and a $1 billion increase to our share repurchase authorization, reflecting confidence in our long-term cash-generating ability and disciplined capital allocation approach.

This base dividend represents approximately 50% of estimated 2026 free cash flow at $50 WTI and is fully covered below $30 WTI. This increased base dividend provides an attractive yield while also allowing us continued financial flexibility to optimize capital allocation through additional returns via a combination of our variable dividend and opportunistic share repurchases.

Given the strength of our balance sheet, we returned 90% of available cash during the fourth quarter, and now, following the closing of our non-Permian divestiture, we are well positioned to increase our return of capital to upwards of 100% of cash available for distribution. Importantly, we expect to execute on this comprehensive return of capital strategy while also continuing to deliver on differentiated growth in per share metrics.

I'm pleased with our accomplishments in 2025 and the strong position Viper is in today, but there is still much to achieve. Looking ahead, Viper is well positioned to generate strong free cash flow, deliver attractive shareholder returns, and continue to pursue accretive Permian consolidation opportunities as they arise.

Operator, please open the line for questions.

morning, guys. Thanks for the time.

Kaes, my first question for you or Austen is just on the Barnett, specifically, last night and this morning FANG's Barnett updates really seemed to be positive and certainly, I think, positive for VNOM. I'm just wondering, could you give any color on how VNOM's ownership translates across FANG's Barnett position?

Neil, I'll give you some of the high level. I think that's what we've continued to try to preach at Viper is the benefits of mineral ownership, and you own from the surface of the earth to the center of the earth in perpetuity.

As operators try new things or try new zones or try new techniques, the benefit of that accrues to the mineral owner without the need to spend capital or take too much risk. Pretty exciting for Viper.

We kind of kicked this off a couple of years ago in terms of leasing, but Austen is going to give some color on where we are today and what we're seeing.

Neal, we're still early stages on the actual leasing program. Diamondback directly and also some of the JVs that they've done have been very active in taking new leases from Viper to give them the rights to develop those deeper zones in the Midland Basin.

Spanish Trail was a big chunk of that that we leased with Diamondback back in 2023. As we sit here today, I would say we've still only leased about 10% to 15% of the acreage that, would potentially be open in the Midland Basin.

That should be a tailwind to come, both from a lease bonus perspective, but also, new inventory locations that are going to come into play and kind of support the production profile over the years to come.

Great point, Austen. Thanks.

Then second question just on return of capital. Specifically, now you've mentioned that you're positioned to return upwards to 100% of cash available for distribution in addition to the share growth.

I'm just wondering, looks like last quarter about 41% of the cash available for distribution went to base dividend and then followed by, what was it, 27% buyback, 23% variable, and 9% debt repayment. How, will this stay in this range or, Austen or Kaes, is this just largely share price dependent or, I'm just thinking more on sort of broad terms and rankings?

Should we, will we see the base dividend still probably be the highest or, how should we think about it?

Listen, the board decided to increase the base dividend by 15%. I think that's a meaningful number.

I think it shows that we've done a good amount of accretive deals, balance sheet strong, that's always going to be the first call on capital. We've also said, hey, when we get to a billion five or a billion six of net debt, we're going to ramp the shareholder returns to almost 100%.

I think we're there. I think it all depends on the market and the stock price and where things are headed.

Obviously, the decision to buy back shares is less obvious today than it was at $37 a share, but I think we recognize that we have done a lot of accretive buybacks at Viper. We'll probably be ready should any of our non- non- traditional holders, the private equity owners, want to sell, we'll help them get out, we did in Q4, we brought back a million shares directly from one of the private equity holders.

I just think having that flexibility is key. In general, I think shareholders still want a lot of cash back and at these prices, with commodity improving and the stock price improving, we probably lean more towards cash return outside of unique situations.

That makes sense. Thanks, Kaes.

Thank you. Good morning.

My question is on the third-party activity outlook that you're seeing there. Given the rig count declines in the Permian, it's notable how resilient Diamondback's or Viper's third-party activity has been holding up fairly well in the last few quarters.

Where are you seeing today in terms of your activity backlog? Are you seeing any slowdown at all, or could this be another area that perhaps it's enhancing the production growth that you might see this year?

Good question, Betty. We really haven't seen much of a slowdown at all across the third-party activity.

We put some new disclosures in this quarter on pages 14 and 15 of the deck that break down kind of some of the key third-party operators by both the Midland and Delaware Basin. Kind of as you look through that list, right, it's dominated by some of the larger players in the industry.

I think that's really helped. I think also it's it's just kind of supportive of the view that we've had of trying to acquire high-quality royalty interest.

As you look at the amount of activity that our acreage position has captured over the years, it's really been consistent in capturing pretty much 50% of everything that happens by third parties across the entire basin, and then you get the kicker of the concentrated development by Diamondback as well. We'll see what happens over the course of the year.

Right now the guidance only based takes into account what we can see, meaning existing DUCs and permits. If activity holds like it can today, that might help a bit on, the production outlook, but, overall I would say the key takeaway is that third-party activity continues to be very strong.

Betty, we always put our operator hat on when we're buying minerals. We always buy under, well-capitalized operators from the third-party side in acreage that we covet, and that usually means that acreage that we covet gets developed first, which is why we've had such strong activity levels on the third-party side.

Yeah. No, that makes sense.

Can really see how resilient that activity broadly is despite the basin overall levels. A follow-up on the lease bonus, and it's related to the Barnett or for the deeper zones as well.

Lease bonus have been coming in fairly strong in 2025, and you got another decent quarter in 4Q. As the basin continue to chase deeper zones, how does that benefit you guys from the lease bonus income perspective?

It's anytime a lease comes available, whether it be because of a vertical well doesn't hold down to the these new emerging deep rights or an operator fails to fulfill some of the requirements in a lease, meaning drilling a well by a certain day or producing a certain amount of production, that lease would terminate, and those rights revert back to us as the mineral owner, and then we can go take a new lease and get that lease bonus and kind of set the clock again on the development requirements. We've spent a lot of time and effort building teams and systems and processes here to manage all of those tens of thousands of leases and the production data associated with that, we can really proactively manage that and have an active leasing program.

I think you're seeing that benefit play out with the lease bonus that we achieved last year and really over the last couple of years. I think that's going to be a continuing theme, both from a deep rights perspective, as well as just operators needing to meet continuous drilling requirements and overall the rig count being lower, so that being harder for certain operators to fill.

Got it. No, that makes sense.

Thank you.

Thanks. Kaes, what's the environment out there right now in terms of the bid-ask for other royalty assets?

Is there another Sitio waiting out there, or have a lot of the big prizes already been taken?

Neil, it's a good question. Minerals are interesting.

When commodity prices are lower, there's not really a need to sell unless there's some other use of proceeds that the seller has. There haven't been a ton of large deals for us to look at over the last six months or so.

I think generally investors wanted a little bit of a break from deals at Viper, big deals in particular, and prove that we could integrate Sitio and the drop-down, and we've done that. I'd say we're ready to look at larger deals.

They're just kind of hard to get done at these prices. Neal, that kind of ties to the thesis around the Viper balance sheet and return of capital.

We kind of said, hey, listen, debt-to-EBITDA at Viper is very close to debt-to-free cash flow, and at a billion five of debt, we're well protected at $50 oil. Also at $50 oil, we don't need a ton of cash for deals because it's harder to get them done.

That's kind of why we set that debt target, and, as you think about, going above that as prices recover, I think, the psyche for sellers changes and we might be able to get some deals done. From a size perspective, it's been hard to get really big deals done over the last, few quarters.

We've done a couple small things that add up over time, but that's kind of how I see the market. Austen, you want to add anything?

No, I agree. The ground game, as we call it, is tough out here, but we have a team dedicated to that, and I think we have the relationships in the basin to get some good value adds that help on the margin.

I think there to Kaes' point, there are bigger strategic deals to be done when the time is right. We just haven't seen those over the last couple quarters more so because of the commodity price environment.

That's great, guys. Then the follow-up is just geography.

It seems like the position is certainly more concentrated on the Midland side, and that's where you had the asset overlap with the parent. How does Delaware fit into the portfolio?

Where, specifically, could you see yourselves leaning in from an activity perspective? Then, I think I know the answer to this, but this is a Permian pure-play story, right?

We would be surprised if you tried to diversify outside of that.

It's definitely a Permian pure-play story. I think the unique attributes of the Permian with the stacked pay and the emerging zones and kind of also some of the modern lease clauses really benefits you more as a mineral owner even than more so than some of the obvious things that you would appreciate from the operator perspective.

It's who we know. It's what we know.

I think most of the sizable deals here exist in the Permian given the still very highly fragmented royalty ownership across Texas and New Mexico. For us, on the royalty side, I think we still see a lot of value in the Delaware Basin.

It's a little bit of a different story given that you're not going to be able to rely on the Diamondback drill bit to drive that visible growth. As we dig in, there's still some really high-quality undeveloped locations there and that exist under well-capitalized operators.

That's kind of how we view it, right? It's just like, what is the likelihood of that next inventory location getting developed?

For us, we get that confidence either via knowing Diamondback's development plan or by just looking at what the operator economics are. I think a lot of that exists today, and especially in the Northern Delaware, we'll focus there where we can.

For us, rock is rock and value is value, it'll just kind of be depending on the assets that are available.

Very clear, guys. Thank you.

Thanks, Neil.

Hey, good morning, guys. My first question is on the 2026 oil guide.

It's quite wide, wondering what that reflects. Is it visibility that you have on the activity, or is it performance-related as flurries in the basin are trying out new stuff?

If it's visibility-related, is it fair to say that visibility is better near-term and less so in the second half of the year?

That's right, Kalei, but mainly on the second point. Beyond on the third-party operated side, we have the same visibility that you do really, being that it's limited to existing DUCs and permits.

If you look at conversion rates and also conversion timelines on wells that have been drilled currently, those typically get converted to production within about 5 to 6 months. We feel very good about the first half of the year and what that growth outlook looks like.

As you move to the second half of the year, it becomes a little bit more tricky task, listening and having conversion rates and timelines on permits. We've modeled the permits that we can see today, but as we progress through the year and potentially activity gets brought forward or new wells get permitted that aren't already included in the guide, that could, help move you up to the higher end of the range.

Really the wide guide right now is just like that that we can only guide to what we see today, and a lot will happen that we don't know about today in the back half of the year.

Thank you, Chip. My second question is on the gas contracts that were announced at Diamondback that are starting up later this year.

To the extent that secures higher gas realizations, wondering if that also benefits Viper on the revenue side?

We do everything essentially heads up between Viper and Diamondback. Any marketing contract benefit rolls through.

It won't be for all of Viper's production, but, for a good majority, the gas realization thesis works pretty well for Viper, too. Particularly now, on the third-party side, debottleneck Permian, given the Viper Delaware exposure, could be a good positive rate of change story as well.

I hope you guys don't mind me trying a third question,

but

I imagine that there's a portfolio of lower-zone rights at Viper, maybe not all that is viewed as being competitive today given where the activity on the Midland side of the basin has been. The proportion that is competitive, should we assume that's already been transferred to Diamondback?

Not all of it has been leased yet. There's still a lot of unleased deep rights at Viper.

As we get closer to development, at Diamondback, it's logical that Viper will be a first call. Now, we got to do things on a market basis, in a heads-up basis, but this relationship between parent and sub, mineral owner and operator, I think is going to pay some long-term dividends with deeper-zone development.

I think the great example was, we leased Spanish Trail, which is 100% of the minerals are owned by Viper. That's what started this business, 15 or 11 years ago, going public.

A 10,000-acre block at 100% NRI is as good as it gets in the Permian Basin.

Appreciate that, guys. Thank you.

Thanks, guys. Good morning.

Hey, Derrick.

Wanted to start on the Barnett regarding the interval and the 200,000 net acres you referenced for Diamondback earlier today. How much coverage do you specifically have with Viper, and does Diamondback have any activity planned at Spanish Trail, the area you were just mentioning, which you guys have a very high NRI for?

Without getting into the specifics, I would say a lot of the work that Diamondback has done has kind of been with third parties. We have the big chunk, kind of in that 10,000 to 15,000-acre block in Spanish Trail, which is going to provide the great alignment between Diamondback and Viper.

Diamondback's had a little bit more flexibility to handle leases with Viper as they come up and fit more term on the development plan, whereas a lot of what they've done has kind of been more bigger strategic options. I think you'll see the alignment continue to improve as we progress through the year.

Then on Spanish Trail, I think if you listened to the Diamondback call, there's been some references to some offset tests, but the first two wells that are going to be tested on Spanish Trail proper, those wells have been permitted and should have production kind of in the mid part of this year. Very excited to see those results and see what that might mean for Diamondback to apply more full-scale development approach where Viper owns 100% of the minerals.

No question. Great development for Viper.

Maybe just going back to some of your M&A comments earlier on the ground game. With the inclusion of the Sitio guys who had really focused on the ground game, I guess how would you characterize the growth you're seeing in organic additions throughout 2025 and what you see ahead for you in 2026?

Listen, we're continuing to look at every deal that crosses our desk, right? We're in the flow.

We know everybody. They're bringing us deals.

I just say it's not that we're not getting anything done, it's just that from a materiality perspective, it takes a lot more effort on the ground game to equal something of the scale that we did last year. Don't count out the ground game.

I think that's still going to be an important part of the story. It's just going to have to add up over time, and then you have the big deals, really moving the needle from a size, scale, and float and liquidity perspective.

Got it. Great.

Very helpful. Thanks for your time.

Thanks, Derrick.

Thanks. Good morning, all.

Thanks for taking the call. Sticking on M&A, you guys have been kind of progressing towards that, billion and a half net debt number, one-turn leverage.

I guess in the presence of a potentially or essentially larger deal, is how much are you, with the increased scale, how much are you willing to flex that out?

I think we probably feel like a little bit of a turn and a half, a little bit above that as a stretch, and then you pay it down, wouldn't hurt. I think we're very cognizant of maintaining and improving our ratings profile.

Getting to investment grade was a big deal for us last year. Pretty unique access to capital at Viper versus peers in the space.

I wouldn't want to stretch the balance sheet, and I think our currency offers a very unique opportunity for sellers as well. We've done a few of these deals with OpCo units where taxes can be deferred, and a lot of large mineral owners have very little basis in their minerals and like that tax-deferred status.

We'd stretch a little bit. I think half a turn of leverage is a big number now, which is a good thing.

Any deal that we do is going to come with significant cash flow. That's how I would frame it.

Got it. Understood.

Then just a housekeeping question on hedge plan. 2026 was pretty well locked in.

Is there any volatility level that would really move you off these marks, or are you guys comfortable with the current levels?

We're comfortable with it. We've had this approach for a while now where we just try to protect against the extreme downside through deferred premium puts.

We've been able to take advantage of some of volatility over the last couple quarters and have a good position built through Q3, which especially given where the debt level is, don't feel like we need to do much more there. As we continue to progress through time, and if you see debt levels stay low like they are now, you could probably just need less protection, meaning either a lower percentage of our volumes hedged or potentially a lower strike price on the puts, and you can get them for a little bit cheaper.

In general, we just want to protect against the extreme downside, ensure that we can continue to pay out a lot of our capital and not have to panic if things go south quickly again, and try to start hoarding cash. I think it's just a prudent approach that we've had that's worked well for us the last couple of years.

Understood. Appreciate the clarity.

I'll leave it there.

Hey, guys. Wanted to follow up on lease bonus income.

Obviously that popped a bit in 2025. I know it's difficult to kind of have any precision guide, but would it be fair to assume that maybe '26 is not dramatically different in terms of lease bonus income?

Are we kind of in a bit of an upcycle versus kind of a handful of years ago? Obviously there's some new zones that are coming to bear, as you guys have described on both this and the FANG call.

We'll see. It's a little bit out of our control given it it's dependent on operators typically failing to meet certain lease provisions or lease requirements, or alternatively or turn of the week having deep rights being opened.

I think we are seeing the deep rights story play out on both the Midland and Delaware side for Viper, in terms of the ground leasing that's happening. I think something also that's going to be interesting to happen, especially post-Sitio, is as you move into 2027 and gas takeaway gets better, to we'll be able to explore what new development areas might look a little bit better with higher gas realizations, and that could help as well.

Maybe it's being optimistic, but I think we can have 2026 look similar to 2025, and really it's going to be the benefit of having a much larger asset base today and a team fully dedicated to proactively managing the position.

That's the key. We're getting a lot better at proactively managing our position despite its size, and that's where some of the Sitio team members that are focused on automation, reviewing title, reviewing leases, this is where I think AI is going to be important for Viper.

We don't have a ton of manpower to study 50,000 wellbores and 40,000 leases, but a machine can do it, and I think that's going to make our shareholders more money.

All right. That's good color there.

I just wanted to ask on kind of oil cut. Your oil cut here was kind of mid-50s several quarters ago, is kind of trending a little bit more towards low 50s.

What do you attribute this to? Is it just more secondary zone development, and of course just, wells get older, GOR sort of increases?

I think if you think about Viper as a bond for the Permian Basin, it actually kind of gives you a good look into where GORs are headed throughout the basin. Last year we added a lot of Delaware exposure through Sitio, so that's part of the equation, but I think, outside of that, you've seen these gas systems and gas plants operate a lot more efficiently in both basins.

You've seen just the gas and the NGL beats be pretty dramatic across the board, and, I think, I think that's telling you something about the basin. It's not necessarily just secondary zones.

I think it's all of the above.

Got it. Okay.

Thanks.

Thanks, Leo. Thank you so

Okay. Thanks, folks.

I appreciate you letting me on here. I want to circle back on the repurchase comments.

It sounds like, Kaes, from your comments that $1 billion authorization maybe as much focused on liquidity for the unnatural holders as it is to open-market repurchases today. I'm just trying to I know you can't show your cards too much, but shares are up 17% year-to-date.

You're still well below where shares traded in '24 and '25 at a higher oil price. Just trying to get your arms around the attractiveness of open-market repurchases today.

It's a good question, Tim. It's a relative question, too, right?

Obviously, open-market repurchases were more obvious in Q4 than they are today. We're trying to walk this balancing act of how to return capital to shareholders.

With the balance sheet where it is, we do have more cash that can go to shareholders in the form of the distribution or repurchases. I think, you should expect us to continue to be flexible.

I don't think we need to spend every dollar we make on repurchases at these levels, but it's still a part of the story. I just think, the bigger slugs could come from, unnatural holders that want to get out, and just having that ability to make sure, the stock's not heavy, and have the repurchase in place is, I think is a good thing for Viper shareholders.

I'm talking down the buyback a little bit relative to Q4 because Q4 was a much different environment than where we are today, but who knows? We could drop from here, and that's why the authorization is there to lean in.

Got it. That's good context.

I appreciate that. Kaes, if I could quickly ask a macro question.

We saw pretty strong third-party turn-in-lines in the fourth quarter relative to the full-year run rate, and if some of that is probably due to the Sitio acquisitions. It seems like industrywide concerns on Permian oil, rolling over, those concerns seem to be fading.

Given the lens into aggregate activity that you have through Viper, do you expect Permian oil to grow this year?

We've been very vocal on the Diamondback side about production and U.S. production.

I think the Permian has always kind of been an outlier. I would say at these oil prices, I haven't heard about operators dropping a rig since kind of the first week of the year, when we had the Venezuela noise.

Since then that's gone very quiet. I think overall Permian probably grows here and, some of the larger operators, the majors are continuing to grow, some of the privates, still have deals to do here and there.

In general, I think the Permian looks strong relative to the rest of North America, and, the conversations about reductions in activity have gone very quiet.

Got it. Appreciate the context.

Thank you.

Thanks, Tim.

Thanks, everybody, for taking the time to listen in today. If you have any questions, please reach out, and we'll talk soon.

Thank you.