Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us and welcome to the Blackstone Minerals third quarter 2026 earnings conference call. After today's prepared remarks, we will host a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one again. I will now hand the conference over to Natalie Liddell, Vice President Corporate Planning. Natalie, please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us by phone or online for Blackstone Minerals' third quarter 2026 earnings conference call. Today's call is being recorded and will be available on our website, along with the earnings release issued last night. Before we start, I'd like to advise you that we will be making forward-looking statements during this call about our plans, expectations, and assumptions regarding our future performance. Thank you for joining us. Reconciliation of these measures to the most directly comparable gap measure and other information about these non-gap metrics are described in our earnings press release from yesterday, which can be found on our website at www.blackstoneminerals.com. Joining me on the call from the company are Taylor DeWalch, Co-CEO and President, Fowler Carter, Co-CEO and President, Steve Putman, Senior Vice President and General Counsel, Chris Bonner, Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer. I'll now turn the call over to Taylor.

Thanks, Natalie. Good morning. Thank you all for joining us. We had a strong third quarter with growth in both oil and natural gas production. Higher volumes, together with continued support from elevated oil prices, contributed to increased cash flow compared to the second quarter. With these results and continued progress toward natural gas production growth, we raised our distribution for the second consecutive quarter while maintaining prudent coverage. As we look ahead, we continue to monitor commodity market conditions and what they may mean for operator activity and our production outlook. We also took an important step in advancing our Shelby Trough strategies, with the amendment and expansion of our Catalyst Agreement. It brings a broader portion of our position into a contracted development program and moves us closer to realizing the production potential of our mineral inventory. These successful results from the third quarter highlight the strength of Blackstone's unique and differentiated strategy. We are both actively managing the portfolio across the lower 48 through current leasing, while also promoting significant growth through our development agreements on high interest The combination of these strategies along with a significant unleased position across the country that we continue to explore provides a solid foundation with substantial growth opportunities. As we look to 2027, our focus is on continued execution under our existing agreements as these development programs progress and grow. Together with ongoing activity across our broader portfolio, We expect these programs to drive higher production and support distribution growth over time. As we evaluate that progress, we'll balance distributions and investment and growth in a way that preserves our financial flexibility. With that, I'll turn over to Fowler to discuss how we are advancing our growth strategy and what the progress across these programs means for Blackstone.

Thanks, Taylor. A key focus of our growth strategy is advancing and the expanded Shelby Trough. Targeted acquisitions and development agreements help us turn that inventory into natural gas production and cash flow. Together these efforts go beyond any single transaction to build a portfolio of development programs that we expect to contribute to production growth over time. At the conclusion of our planned acquisition program we expect approximately This reflects how targeted additions build on our existing acreage position and enhance the overall development opportunity. Our expanded cataract agreement reflects our strategy of working with operators to move more of our acreage towards delineation, development, and ultimately production. Strong Industry Interest during the marketing process reinforced our confidence in the long-term potential of the position. This amendment, combined with our other high-interest development agreements, brings the total area covered by our Catalyst, Atomos, and Revenant agreements to approximately 1.4 million gross acres. Additionally, we have approximately 50,000 gross acres under traditional leases and active areas throughout the Shelby Trough. We are seeing development activity continue to build across this acreage. Atomos is bringing additional wells online, Revenant's first production is expected by year-end, and Catarist has spud its first two development wells under the original agreement, with production expected in the first half of 2017. across our broader Shelby Trough position, Exco, Apex, Rockcliff, and BPX currently have 10 combined wells drilling or awaiting completion on our acreage. An additional drilling permit filing Thank you for watching. At the core of our growth outlook are our Shelby trough development programs. With these agreements now in place and development advancing, we expect significant growth in natural gas production and cash flow. We believe this expected growth, together with opportunities elsewhere in our mineral portfolio, provides a strong foundation for growing returns to unit holders in the years ahead. With that, I'll turn the call over to Chris to cover the financial results.

Thanks, Fowler, and good morning. Mineral and royalty production during the third quarter averaged 34.5 MB per day, while total production averaged 35.6 MB per day. Mineral and royalty production increased 6% from the second quarter, driven by both higher natural gas volumes from the Hainesville-Bossier and higher oil volumes from the Permian. Commodity prices remained supportive during the quarter, particularly for oil. Our average realized price, excluding the impact of derivative settlements, was roughly in line with last quarter. Power Production contributed to stronger oil and gas revenues and cash flow, with oil and condensate accounting for nearly two-thirds of our oil and gas revenues. Net income was approximately $52 million for the quarter, which included a non-cash, unrealized relative loss of about $30 million. Adjusted EBITDA was $104 million, and distributable cash flow was $93 million. As previously announced, we declared a distribution of 35 cents per unit for the quarter, or $1.40 on an annualized basis. Stronger cash flow supported our second consecutive quarterly distribution increase, while allowing us to maintain 1.25 times coverage for the quarter. Maintaining that balance allows us to pursue accretive growth opportunities while supporting our objective of sustainable distribution growth. As Taylor and Fowler discussed, programs under our development agreements, including the expansion of our Caterers program, is positioning more of our acreage to help meet anticipated natural gas demand growth from LNG exports, power generation, and industrial uses. Our proximity to Gulf Coast demand centers reinforces that opportunity. Our focus remains on advancing development with the goal of growing production, cash flow, and distributions for unit holders. With that, we'll open it up for questions.

We will now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one again. We ask that you pick up your handset when asking a question to allow for optimum sound quality. If you are muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of John Annis with Texas Capital Bank. John, your line is open. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning, all, and thanks for taking my questions. My first one is on the expanded Catalyst Agreement. What did the pilot work or subsurface data show that gave both parties the confidence to expand the contract area by 730,000 gross acres?

Hey, John. Hi, John. Fowler here. Caterus collected a lot of data on that well. And as we've said, we're excited to expand the contract area with them. And we're not going to jump in front of them on comments to that. But I think the expansion of the contract speaks to answer the question.

That makes sense. For my follow-up, production showed some nice growth sequentially. Can you walk us through kind of the main drivers of that growth and how we should think about volumes over the next couple quarters as the remaining Adonis and Blue Arrow wells come online?

Yeah, I can start with that. So looking at the Shelby trough, Adamas continues to turn wells on and we expect that to continue. And then are looking forward, as we mentioned, to the first revenant wells coming on and cataracts wells in early 27. So generally on the gas side, we expect that to just be a steady ramp as we go into next year. On the oil side, certainly encouraged by the high interest development with Blue Arrow and think that that will continue. continue to show a growth in oil volumes. And then we've also just seen broadly across the Permian and Bakken more wells coming online as operators work through ducks. I think there it is a little bit more price sensitive and we'll see what operators decide to do with their CapEx budgets going into next year. But we're certainly expecting that to continue to be a strong driver of our volumes and revenue.

Got it. If I could sneak one last one in, maybe more on the macro side. With several operators advancing programs across the Shelby Trough, are you guys seeing any constraint around takeaway capacity services or anything else that could limit the pace of development of activity scales?

Yeah, thanks, John. This is Taylor. I'll touch on that. I think when we look at takeaway capacity on the Shelby trough, that's been a conversation that's been had between us, the operators, and potential midstream gatherers and long haul pipes for quite some time now, trying to get ready ahead of the volumes coming online from the Shelby trough. I think we're all excited about the potential of the size of volumes that we're all forecasting to come out of that area. But over the long haul, we're going to need some additional capacity. And I'd say those projects are well underway, especially I think if we specifically call out the deal between Williams and Momentum. I certainly think there's capital being injected into that area. And we're excited to have some more capacity that goes south towards the LNG core. kind of towards some of the other LNG facilities such as Venture Global and other projects underway. So I think that, you know, those projects are well on the way and we shouldn't see any takeaway or large scale takeaway constraints as we move forward the supply curve.

I appreciate the time. I'll turn it back.

Thanks, John.

Your next question comes from the line of Tim Resvan with KeyBank Capital Markets. Tim, your line is open. Please go ahead.

Good morning, folks. Thank you for taking our questions. We appreciated the detailed update about your operating agreements and the release. So I just wanted to ask, kind of with that Catalyst expansion, where do you stand with resource capture at this point? You've spent about $335 million. You have a number of agreements lined up. Are you done? Is there more to do? Just kind of trying to understand your appetite at this point.

I think the best way to answer that is stay tuned. That's all I'm going to say.

Yeah, I think, Tim, this is Taylor. I'll just add on to that a little bit, too. I mean, we continue to move forward with our acquisition program. We've talked about it in the past that, you know, I think we said a couple of quarters ago that we're about halfway through it. So we're more than halfway through at this point, but we're still seeing opportunities to continue to bolt on to get to the type of scale that we're You know, we really desire in order to place the acreage into these development agreements to also help incentivize the operators. So, you know, we're we're over halfway through and continue to move forward with acquisitions in that area. One other comment I might just make, and this goes back to one of the previous questions as well on cataracts is, you know, We had a pretty strong and competitive marketing process on these expanded areas. So I don't think that it's tied to any specific well, but more thinking about the broader area and just general excitement on the expanding Shelby Trough in the Hainesville-Bossier play. And that covering, like Fowler said in his prepared remarks, well over a million gross acres that we now have in these contracted agreements.

I think I understand your body language pretty clearly on that. If we think about the capital structure at this point, it looks like you're about a little over half drawn on your credit facilities. I think the next three determinations in the spring. How should we think about sources of capital for any incremental acquisitions? I know you have the preferred that's sort of out there. So how do you think about capital structure to support this growth that is clearly underway?

I'll maybe just touch on it quickly Tim and then Chris can jump in as well. One of the keys for us is to I think we've continued to do that. I think when we look at the current cycle that we're in, we think about how do we utilize this elevated oil price cycle to make the business better. And we think we can do that through both two consecutive quarters of distributions, but also focusing on maintaining a clean balance sheet and then growing the business for the Thank you so much for joining us.

I think the only thing I'll add to that is we do feel that our existing credit facility is sufficient to meet our needs when it comes to the acquisition program.

Okay, that's good context. And if I could just sneak one more in, you know, you surprised us with the distribution increase this quarter and it looks like, you know, ample coverage for that payment. In the past, you know, the board has tried to maintain a fixed distribution, you know, despite Thank you.

Thanks, Tim. I think our strategy around the distribution stays the same. We raised it because we felt comfortable about where our forecast stands, which is what we've signaled to you guys in the past. So we're happy to be able to recommend and get the approval for the distribution growth. And like I said, we continue to look out to the forecast for just maintaining kind of flexibility related to all of our financials.

Okay. I appreciate all the comments. Thank you.

Thanks, Tim. We have reached the end of the Q&A session. I will now turn the call back to Taylor DeWalch, Co-Chief Executive Officer and President, for closing remarks.

Thank you all for joining us this morning. Really excited to both announce continued growth in the Shelby Trough as well as strong quarterly results and look forward to speaking to you all again next quarter.

This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect