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EON Resources Inc. (EONR) reported record net income for the third quarter of 2025, achieving significant financial milestones including a reduction in debt and an increase in shareholder equity. Following the earnings call, EONR's stock price saw a substantial increase, rising 5.82% to $0.507 in regular trading and continuing to climb 6.45% in premarket trading, reaching $0.51.
Key Takeaways
- EON Resources achieved a record net income of $5.6 billion in Q3.
- The company reduced its convertible notes from $9.8 million to $5.4 million.
- Stock price increased by 5.82% post-earnings call, with further gains in premarket trading.
- Plans to drill 92 wells over five years, with potential production of 300-500 barrels per day per well.
Company Performance
In Q3 2025, EON Resources demonstrated robust financial health by significantly reducing its debt and increasing shareholder equity by $22.7 million. The company retired $41 million in senior and seller debt and redeemed preferred shares valued at $27 million. These efforts have left EONR with a minimal debt position, enhancing its financial flexibility.
Financial Highlights
- Record net income: $5.6 billion
- Debt reduction: Convertible notes decreased to $5.4 million
- Shareholder equity increase: $22.7 million
- Current production: Over 1,000 gross barrels of oil per day
Market Reaction
EONR's stock responded positively to the company's Q3 performance, with a 5.82% increase in regular trading and a further 6.45% rise in premarket trading. This positions the stock closer to its 52-week high of $1.90, reflecting strong investor confidence in the company's strategic direction and financial health.
Outlook & Guidance
Looking ahead, EON Resources plans to commence horizontal drilling by Q2 2026, targeting a production increase of 500 barrels per day within 6-9 months. The company is also exploring gas monetization through power generation and has hedged 25% of its production for Q1 2026 at $62.50 per barrel. A potential material acquisition is on the horizon for the first half of 2026.
Executive Commentary
CEO Dante Caravaggio emphasized the company's strong position, stating, "We are no melting ice cube, and we have great inventory to certainly carry us through the rest of this decade." He also reassured investors with, "We make money now," highlighting the company's current profitability and future potential.
Risks and Challenges
- Market volatility: Oil prices remain weak, affecting revenue potential.
- Gas sales challenges: Maintenance issues at gas plants may hinder sales.
- Operational costs: Plans to cut lease operating and G&A expenses by $200,000 monthly.
Q&A
During the earnings call, analysts inquired about the company's drilling plans and gas sales challenges. Management confirmed the expiration of warrants in November 2028 and reiterated their commitment to maintaining shareholder value amidst fluctuating oil prices.
Full transcript - EON Resources Inc (EONR) Q3 2025:
David Smith, General Counsel, EON Resources: Mitch, I couldn't make head or tail out of those shareholder lists. It was, it was a mess.
Mitch Trotter, Chief Financial Officer, EON Resources: Hush.
Good day, worldwide. Welcome to the EON Resources announces third quarter 2025 earnings call. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode. If you have any questions or comments during the presentation, you may press star one on your phone to enter the question queue at any time, and we'll open the floor for your questions and comments after the presentation. If you're listening on webcast, you can submit a question by clicking on the ask question button on the left of your screen. Type your question into the box and hit the send button to submit your question. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, David Smith. Sir, the floor is yours.
David Smith, General Counsel, EON Resources: Good afternoon to everyone. I'm David Smith. I'm General Counsel for the company. Glad to join you this afternoon. I need to, as we get started, go to review our safe harbor statement regarding today's conference call. Please note that on this call, we will be making forward-looking statements made under the safe harbor provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are based on current expectations and assumptions, which are subject to risk and uncertainties. These statements reflect our views only as of today. They should not be relied upon as representative of views as of any subsequent date, and we undertake no obligation to revise or publicly release the results of any revision to these forward-looking statements in light of new information or future events.
These statements are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. Further information regarding these and other risks and uncertainties are included in the company's annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2024, and in other documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Today, I would like to introduce our presenters, the executive management staff of the company. You'll see on the slide if you're participating in the webcast, Dante Caravaggio. He is our CEO, Mitchell Trotter, our Chief Financial Officer, myself, and Jesse Allen, who is our Vice President of Operations. To get started and to kick this off, I'd like to make a few points about the third quarter. It was a remarkable quarter. We had record net income of $5.6 billion.
We retired all $41 million of senior and seller debt. We retired all preferred shares that had a redemption value of $27 million, and we increased shareholder equity by $22.7 million. In addition, we acquired a 10% override with the original seller group who had retained it when we purchased the Grayburg Jackson field and the company that owned it. Additionally, we were able to farm out the San Andreas formation for a horizontal well drilling program in which we retained a 35% working interest throughout that program. This is in addition to the retention and continued development of the formations other than the San Andreas, which includes our current wells and producing programs. Those are unaffected by this drilling program that'll kick off next year.
The thing to really note is this was all done and closed on September 9, and we took on absolutely no debt to achieve these results. A remarkable time. The drilling program that I described will be over the next five years. We expect to drill as many as 92 wells under that program. We will continue to maintain that 35% working interest in that development, and there are multiple pay zones throughout our acreage, not just the San Andreas. We are gonna continue to develop, develop all that we can in that respect. Our current production is typically out of the Seven Rivers formation in our waterflood. We are seeing results already from our balance sheet being cleaned up with this transaction. Our ability to raise capital has really been enhanced. It is really the look of a new company.
Our phone has been ringing off the hook with opportunities. We're looking at acquisitions. We're always looking at enhancing reserves. Of course, throughout all of this, our main focus is to get the stock price up. That drives us every day. Those are the highlights. That's what strikes me in my role here as General Counsel as to what we're doing. I'm very excited about the future and really pleased to introduce Dante Caravaggio now to take it up from where I've described. Dante, go ahead. Thank you, David. I'll just start off by saying Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas because this, I believe, is our last shareholder earnings call until next year. I think the main thought we wanna leave with everybody is, let's get the party started.
We really had a mountain to climb. We wanted to fulfill all the promises and commitments that we made to our shareholders. Really, as David said, on September 9th, we really did that. We did not leave a mess. The balance sheet is clean. The debt story is a good one. We are attractive for investors that will help us raise capital, buy new properties, and off we go. I think the other thought I'll leave you with is inventory. You know, this deal we did with Vertus, we have in there the potential of drilling 92 horizontal wells. You have to really look hard at a lot of oil companies much larger than us to find 92 drillable wells in inventory.
We have got them, and these are gonna be big wells. The other thing we have got, again, I will use that word inventory. We have got 30, 350 producers sitting there at Grayburg Jackson waiting for us to stimulate them, perforate them, and make them do better than they are doing. We are now in a position where the cash is there. We can invest in these things and get that to go. Our primary focus with regard to that is conversion of another 150 SVR water flood patterns. By way of history, this field at one point was down to 300 barrels a day. It made it up to over 1,000 barrels a day primarily by converting current wells to SVR injectors and producers. We are going to continue doing that same thing.
The other thing we added to, I'll say, inventory of workovers is the purchase of the South Justice field. That field was down to 50 barrels a day. It's got 200 wells on it. We're gonna activate those wells, and those wells, on average, make double or triple on a per well basis the oil per day that Grayburg Jackson does. If I recap this, yep, we raised $45 million. We cleaned up the balance sheet with that. We sold an interest to Vertus to do some drilling in the San Andreas. Included in that is a $2 million fund to do some experimental workovers to test their theory of completions in the San Andreas. That's gonna give us a near-term kick in production. The farm-out, I think we discussed that.
Then, going forward from that, we've got an awful lot of work just to increase production, I believe, by 500 barrels a day without drilling over the next six to nine months, not counting what Vertus is gonna be. That includes completing a water injection line. You're gonna hear Jesse talk about that, continuing to bring on wells that are offline by using the four rigs that are running, and then through stimulations. With that, I'm gonna turn it over first to Mitch Trotter to talk about the finances.
Mitch Trotter, Chief Financial Officer, EON Resources: All righty. Please advance to the financing highlights. Good. Thank you, Dante. Hello, I am Mitch Trotter, the CFO, and I thank all of you for attending today. As Dante and David so articulated, the September 9th funding resulted in major improvements to our Q3 financials. Yeah. This highlight slide, it is the same one that is in the funding call deck. We have been through it before. I have it there mainly for reference so that you have the deck, and it can help you understand as I go through the parts, the financials. The sources of the $40.5 million of volumetric or refunding and the $5 million from the farm-out agreement, they have many parts with differing GAAP treatment. We will kind of go through that a little bit.
The same thing for the uses, where we retired the senior debt and we acquired the seller ORI, and we retired those preferred shares. All those major impacts flowed through the balance sheet and some to the income statement. Let's move on to the balance sheet slide, and then let me kinda show where some of the big parts are on that. You know, again, this is a major improvement. Can't say it more times, but the slide you have here is a condensed version of what's actually in the Q, the 10-Q, and it best illustrates the impacts. How do we clean up the balance sheet with respect to debt, which has by far the largest impact?
Again, we retired $21 million of senior debt, and with that, we have a $1.5 million reduction in the debt that you will see comes through as a gain on the income statement, and I'll explain that in a little bit. We also retired that senior debt of $15 million with the seller, and it also eliminated a $5 million accrued interest. We did all that for $7 million, thus creating a $13 million gain that you'll also see when we go through the income statement in a minute. Do note that the convertible notes, they're still there, but we reduced them to $5.4 million from the original $9.8 million that was private loans and warrant obligations by the end of the quarter.
The end result of all of this cleaning up of debt is we only have $1 million left of current debt, and the other $4.4 million is long-term debt, and we have a huge drop in our accrued liability. That was all good. Now, shareholder equity, that's also been transformed as well. The preferred shares, as David stated, that had a $27 million redemption value, and it was retired for only 1.5 million common shares, that we announced back on September 9. This eliminated all the minority interest. Our equity is cleaned up with respect to all the miscellaneous things. The end result of our shareholder equity, the end result of the financing, the elimination of the debt instruments, the related gains, and all that flowing through, our shareholder equity went up by over $22 million from Q2 to Q3.
With that, let's go ahead and move on to the income statement slide, please. This too is a condensed version, just like the balance sheet, to hopefully let you see things a little bit better. This, again, is a reset of our P&L going forward. The Q3 net income was the highest level to date at $5.6 million for the quarter. While most of that net income came from Blue Line, those gains were definitely earned by all the hard work we did, and David did a really good job of articulating how we got there. What does that mean? In Blue Line, there is that $13.4 million of gain. That is a combination of the seller note reduction, how the various ORIs, and all the related costs relating to that are recorded for GAAP purposes.
There is that $1.8 million gain, and that comes from the senior debt retirement plus a gain from settling an old fee. Now, offsetting these gains, there is $1.1 million of one-time expenses. GAAP has us include up in the G&A versus down below the line. GAAP required this grouping of the $1.1 million one-time charges in G&A, which personally I think is misleading, but that is where it is. The actual recurring G&A expenses continue to decline quarter over quarter, and that is a huge improvement. That is what we have been talking about all year long, and we are pleased to say that. Another cost reduction, as we stated on the funding call, is a decrease of interest expense of up to $500,000 a month.
Most of the interest for September was eliminated with the September 9th funding, and you can see that in the reduction of about $1.7 million down to $1.2 million, interest expense for the quarter. As always, I will tell you, we'll take questions at the end of this presentation and willing to have individual discussions as well. With that, reach out to Mike Porter, our investor relations guy, and we'll do that. We've done that plenty of times with many of you. With that, I do wanna move on to Jesse to review operations. Please advance to Jesse's slide. Thank you.
Jesse Allen, Vice President of Operations, EON Resources: Yes. Good afternoon. I'm Jesse Allen, VP of Operations. Today I'll talk about some of the third quarter highlights from an operations viewpoint, in other words, our daily operations. I'll make a few comments about the San Andreas farm-out to Vertus and some of those details. With that, safety, that's always a foremost, one of the most important things that we can do is make sure that all our employees are safe. As a matter of fact, we've had no reportable incidents in this quarter, and we've not had any reportable incidents since we took over operations back in November of 2023. Combined production remains consistent above 1,000 gross barrels of oil per day in the two fields, the Grayburg Jackson field and our South Justice field. Currently, we have four well service rigs operating across both fields.
We have three rigs in the Grayburg Jackson field, which is just outside Loco Hills, New Mexico, and then one rig in the South Justice field area, which is just outside of Jal, New Mexico. One of the big projects that has been ongoing is the installation of two miles of injection pipeline. We are in the pressure testing mode right now and hooking up the injection wells and each of the injection well headers. That is ongoing currently. We get to the big, the biggie here, which is the San Andreas farm-out to Vertus, which we cannot say enough. It was a really good deal for both parties. We signed that on the 9th of September of 2025. A few of the really big highlights are that horizontal drilling is scheduled to begin there in 2026.
Depending on the length of time it takes to get the BLM permits, that would be the federal drilling permits, we think it will probably be in the second quarter of 2026. I need to let you all know that on our website, which is EON-R.com, you can find our horizontal drilling package or deck that details a little bit of what I am going to talk about today. On our site, you go, of course, you are on the home page, you click on operations, then click the Grayburg Jackson field, and then page down to the horizontal operations, and then click on horizontal drilling, and that will get you that presentation. A few of those highlights, we, as a result of our farm-out to Vertus, we got a cash consideration of $5 million. The post-deal working interest will be 65% Vertus and 35% for EON.
The plan is to drill 10-20 wells per year for the next five years. Initial production from those wells will be in the range of 300-500 barrels of oil per day per well. That's what we anticipate. The cost of each of those wells will be in the $3.5-$4 million range. With that, I'll turn the call back over to Dante Caravaggio, our CEO and President.
Dante Caravaggio, CEO and President, EON Resources: Yeah. Thanks, Jesse. So, what's next? Or, you know, some of you may ask, are we a one-trick pony? Is this third quarter gonna repeat? Was that a one-time deal? The answer is no. We have not rested on our laurels since we got that deal done. Maybe sometimes we gotta get some stuff out of David, so we would sit on them. I have to work that out there. We are not happy with our costs. We want to cut about $200,000 a month out of our lease operating expense and another $200,000 a month out of the G&As. As Mitch said, we have a lot of one-time charges that hit us in Q3 that caused those costs to kind of go up, and they're gone. You might say, what was it?
We had a lot of help. We had a lot of brokers. We had a lot of attorneys, and they did a fabulous job, but now they're gone. They're off the payroll. Back to what's next. It is back to the inventories that I talked about before. We got 92 wells we believe we can drill. Between the two fields we've got, we've got 500 producers that we can do workovers on, and we can't get that all done in a year or even two years. Over three years, we're gonna be busy. What that does is increases production. A lot of oil fields are in a decline mode, and people will use the term, you're buying a melting ice cube, and it's hot. It's hot here today in Houston, Texas, but we're not that.
We are a company rich with opportunity, and we are raising money to make sure we get this and get it going. You know, every quarter we expect to see increased production in an increasing amount. One of my slides here, my top bullet says, we're gonna improve financials with increased production through 2026. We can see all the way to 2030. These numbers are just gonna keep going up well beyond 2030. You know, that's the magic, I think, of what we've got. Near-term production increase, we gotta get the water line energized. Jesse talked about that. We think that within 90 days, we're gonna get a kick in oil production because our waterflood is water starved because this four-inch supply line's not running. It's been that way for a year.
Frankly, you have not seen the effect of it because Jesse has been so good with stimulating wells, keeping them all going. You just have not seen that effect. When we kick that thing in, it is going to be a real, a real boost. I have got here, we are going to do a material acquisition the first half of next year. I am just going to say we see big, big numbers without taking on debt and without selling any shares where we can be creative to buy properties. We are looking at these. We cannot tell you about it because it is top, top secret, but I can tell you we are working on it diligently to the point of how are we going to operate, how are we going to raise the funds, how do we do this without diluting shares, how do we do this without taking on debt?
We've got most of those questions answered. It's really gonna be fun when we can talk about it. The horizontal drilling should commence the second quarter of next year. That's gonna be a blast. You're gonna get a glimpse of that when Vertus does some workovers. We expect those workovers to happen in the next 60 days, and we'll do our best to report that, although that might be kept secret if it's too good because, you know, these guys are, you know, they've got something good, and they're under our hood. It's actually a battle to share much of that with everybody. The downside, oil prices are weak.
We'd like them to stay above 60, and we're encouraging everybody out there to, you know, drive to your destination, you know, fill it up with premium and stay under the speed limit and be safe. We're mostly debt-free, which helps us weather the storm. If we've got low oil prices and lower income, we can offset that with a savings of close to $400,000 a month that we don't pay in interest. That expense is gone. We also can help that by just increasing production. We're in a good position if the worst happens and oil prices drop. Gas prices are increasing, so that's a good thing, but we struggle to sell all our gas. The midstream buyer has struggled keeping their plant running, and we're looking at options.
We have some shareholders reaching out to us, which we thank, with regard to using gas-fired turbines to generate power that could save us $70,000 a month. We could also use the same turbines to power up data centers or to power up Bitcoin mining. All those things are being done by our competitors, and we really do not have the funds to experiment, but we are going to piggyback a proven solution. With that, I am just going to wrap it up and say we are excited about where we are at. We are no melting ice cube, and we have great inventory to certainly carry us through the rest of this decade. With that, I will turn it back over to David and Matt.
David Smith, General Counsel, EON Resources: This is David here. Thank you. If you will go forward with the question and answer period that we've arranged.
Matthew, Call Moderator: Certainly. Everyone at this time will be conducting a question and answer session. If you have any questions or comments, please press star one on your phone at this time. We do ask that while posing your question, please pick up your handset if you're listening on speakerphone to provide optimum sound quality. We do ask that participants please ask one question and one follow-up, then re-enter the queue. Once again, if you have any questions or comments, please press star one on your phone. Thank you. Your first question is coming from William Peters. Your line is live.
Hi. Thank you for taking my call. Great balance sheet cleanup. Your stock seems to be a gentleman in the rough. My question was answered already, but I just wanted to reaffirm, supplying energy to data centers, AI mining, etc. seems like a great future for the company if they could form some type of affiliation with somebody. I know you said money was tight, but to have that correlation would be great for the future. That's it. Thank you very much. Good holidays.
Dante Caravaggio, CEO and President, EON Resources: Thank you, William. Yeah. Thank you. The only note I'd say there is we just do not know enough yet. We're dabbling in it. You know, we do not have a proposal, but we're asking for proposals for people who know how to take our gas and monetize it. So thank you for bringing that up.
Okay. Good luck. Thank you very much. Bye.
Matthew, Call Moderator: Thank you. Once again, everyone, if you have any questions or comments, please press star, then one on your phone at this time. Please hold while I poll for questions. Thank you. That concludes our verbal Q&A. For those listening on webcast, you can submit a question at this time by clicking on the ask question button on the left of your screen. Type your question into the box and hit send to submit your question. I will now turn the call over to Mitchell Trotter for remaining questions.
Mitch Trotter, Chief Financial Officer, EON Resources: All righty. Thank you, Matthew. The first two questions are very similar, and I think we've answered, but I am going to read through them or paraphrase them so Dante can answer a little bit more if needed. The gist of the questions are to you, Dante. When do you expect the first horizontal drilling to start up? And, you know, with respect to the new, the future and exploring the reserves that we've identified in the past and opportunities with this driller. So with that, Dante.
Dante Caravaggio, CEO and President, EON Resources: Yeah. Yeah. So once a month, I, Jesse or I are meeting with Lance Taylor and his team, and they've pretty much picked out the locations where they wanna go. I'll say the first dozen. The steps they have to go through is go ahead and get those permitted. As a lot of folks know, the BLM was shut down, and the Trump administration is saying he's gonna put the pedal to the metal to get drilling permits approved. My best guess, and I base it on the feedback I have from my colleagues at Vertus, is that the permitting should get into the feds this year, and then hopefully it gets approved the end of first quarter and then maybe the end of second quarter next year we're drilling.
We should see results, we think, in June or July of 2026. The plan is to drill 10-20 wells a year, starting out with maybe six wells, start out, something like that. These things are not decided yet, and we do want a healthy oil price. Above $60 a barrel, it is a no-brainer. Below $60, we have to do some hard thinking. That is the best indication I can give you.
Mitch Trotter, Chief Financial Officer, EON Resources: All right. Thank you, Dante. The next question, I will say, is for me. And the question is the EON warrants. They have two different expiration dates at two separate brokerage accounts. Any idea why? There is only one expiration date, and that's five years from when we became the public company in November. We have found that more than two brokers have keyed in the wrong date into people's accounts as to when the expirations of the warrants go. It is November of 2028. We can't control the brokers, but that's what they've done. We've reached out to them.
Dante Caravaggio, CEO and President, EON Resources: Why don't we do this on that one, Mitch? Just because I wanna run that question by Matt.
Mitch Trotter, Chief Financial Officer, EON Resources: Mm-hmm.
Dante Caravaggio, CEO and President, EON Resources: Our SEC attorney and just double-check that because, and I'm just saying this from memory, I apologize, guys, for thinking on a call like this, but, you know, some warrants were available by investors before we went public. I don't know if the dates did cascade in there depending on.
Mitch Trotter, Chief Financial Officer, EON Resources: They're gone.
Dante Caravaggio, CEO and President, EON Resources: Where you bought them before they.
Mitch Trotter, Chief Financial Officer, EON Resources: They're all.
Dante Caravaggio, CEO and President, EON Resources: Before we went public.
Mitch Trotter, Chief Financial Officer, EON Resources: They're all gone. This is the IPO warrants all from the initial IPO. The brokerage accounts have admitted that they've got it wrong.
Dante Caravaggio, CEO and President, EON Resources: Okay.
Mitch Trotter, Chief Financial Officer, EON Resources: We will reconfirm the date, and I think that's important.
Dante Caravaggio, CEO and President, EON Resources: Yeah. Because I'm confused, and I think it's an excellent question. Let's just put it on the website so everybody knows, you know, including me, 'cause I.
Mitch Trotter, Chief Financial Officer, EON Resources: Sure.
Dante Caravaggio, CEO and President, EON Resources: Yeah. I'm, it's not clear in my head.
Mitch Trotter, Chief Financial Officer, EON Resources: Sure.
Dante Caravaggio, CEO and President, EON Resources: I apologize, guys, that I'm not.
Mitch Trotter, Chief Financial Officer, EON Resources: Yeah. No, no. That's fair. And just so everyone knows, you know, we have an FAQ under our website on the investor page. I think it's under the governance or the documents. It's off on the right. We will just add that FAQ to it and so that we can then answer it there so people can go look at it. Okay. Good point. Okay. I think, Dante, you've answered this one, but I'll give it to you again. At what price, what barrel price does EON Resources start making money? And, I'll give that to you.
Dante Caravaggio, CEO and President, EON Resources: We make money now. I mean, really, if you look at what we're doing, we're in the red about $100,000. You know, Mitch and I look at this. You know, today, we're in the red about $100,000, and I've asked that Mitch, who controls G&As, and Jesse, who controls lease operating expense, to each cut $200,000. If we, and they've got a plan. I believe we're profitable right now at today's oil price. Certainly, if we can get oil prices to go up to $65 or $70, then we don't have to work so hard.
If we buy some additional acquisitions, especially ones that do not cause the G&As to go up, which is what we believe is the case or what we are looking at, then we really get a shot in the arm. I am looking at really high-quality, highly profitable properties that will help us, but we do not really need anything to be profitable today. We just need to be a little better at controlling our costs, and it is well within our range. Remember, we got rid of a $700,000 principal and interest payment, so we have got lots of room to work. You know, we were still paying down debt, but sadly, we leaned too hard on the ELOC, which created more shares in circulation.
We are doing our best to not do that at all and make a go of it with just the production coming out of the ground, controlling our costs, and adding one or two acquisitions, hopefully in the next six to nine months, something like that. I hope that answers the question.
Mitch Trotter, Chief Financial Officer, EON Resources: Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Let me give this one to Jesse. What issues are you facing selling the gas?
Jesse Allen, Vice President of Operations, EON Resources: Let's see. We're currently making about 6-700 MCF per day, or 700,000 standard cubic feet per day, to a plant that's an older plant, the Malmstrom plant. They've been doing a lot of maintenance recently on their gas treating trains, and they've been putting in some new lines. It's not only us that are being curtailed. It's also all the other operators that produce into that plant. The operator of the Malmstrom plant, they've actually got another plant that they just got online, and they're lining that out now. We anticipate that in the not-too-distant future, we shouldn't have this issue of getting rid of all our gas.
I'm sure that the genesis of that question probably came from, "Well, once you start drilling the horizontal wells and you're making a lot more gas, what are you gonna do with that gas?" That gas will go to that same plant. By that time, they should have worked out all the maintenance issues that they're having to perform, and then some of that gas will go to the new plant. We do not anticipate in the future having any gas sales issues and getting rid of our gas. I hope that answers the question right there.
Mitch Trotter, Chief Financial Officer, EON Resources: It sounds like it does. Okay. This one, Dante, is for you. Congratulations on the great third quarter with regards to the first three wells by Vertus. We'll be drilling by mid-2026. In your agreement with them, are they required to drill at least these first three wells regardless of the oil price at the time?
Dante Caravaggio, CEO and President, EON Resources: It's really their option when to drill. Those first three are solid gold to us because we call it a carry. We don't have to pay a dime. They front all that money. I believe they're gonna drill, you know, as long as oil prices are, you know, as long as oil prices don't collapse, I believe they're gonna drill. Is $55 okay? Is $50 okay? Is $45 okay? I don't know the answer to that, but they have five years to drill 18 wells to hold the rights to our San Andreas formation. We just feel confident, you know. I mean, I'll just have to give my outlook on oil prices. If oil prices decline much below $60, it's not attractive for anybody to drill.
What happens is the drillers and the oil producers all shut down. Then what happens? The fields just start declining. Oil prices will start going up as oil production drops. Now oil production drops, oil prices go up, drilling starts picking up. It is kind of a self-controlling loop. If oil prices go down, drilling slows down, it decreases in production, increases. U.S. slows down producing oil, oil prices go back up. As it goes up, drilling picks back up, production goes back up, oil prices come down. I think the search for equilibrium is what everybody is guessing. The number is probably going to be slightly above where people would drill. People, frankly, are reluctant to drill at $60.
Our formation is pretty good, so we feel we have healthy economics at $60. A lot of people can't drill without $70. If you said, "Where will this sort of level out, and where will it be, and how does all this stuff kinda work?" I mean, I feel like oil prices are gonna hang in there $60-$70 with some excursions below that range and above that range. That's the best I can tell you. I hope that answers your question.
Mitch Trotter, Chief Financial Officer, EON Resources: Okay. We have time for a few more questions. Just a couple more, but let me, this one's for me. What convertible notes were redeemed and which have not been redeemed, and how did you decide which in order to redeem? Going back in time, we've talked about converting the private loans and the warrant obligations into convertible notes all the way back into the end of 2024. And as we have been stating, really every quarter, our intent is to try to clean up all of this by the end of this year, at least with respect to the non-insiders. And that's what we've just about done. All of these private loans came from people that were close to us when we were a SPAC, and had no source of income. So that's what got us across the line to begin with.
We have redeemed to date all now, all but $250,000 of non-insider, and the last under $2 million is insiders, and we can't do them right now anyway. That's kinda how we picked them, and who's redeemed and who's not redeemed.
Dante Caravaggio, CEO and President, EON Resources: Yeah. I, you know, I wanna add something to that. You know, as a management team, we take great pride that nobody who has invested with us has lost a dime. And, you know, we view that as a sacred trust with our investors and shareholders. For those that hold the shares, trust me, I'm one of those that paid north of $2, you know, for these shares, and I'm not gonna rest until this stock is really, you know, Joe and I talk about it, $100 a share. Now, am I gonna get that done, you know, this year? Probably not. In fact, I almost bet I won't get that done this year. I think before, before the end of the decade, that's my goal. I'm just gonna say that.
Mitch Trotter, Chief Financial Officer, EON Resources: Okay. I've got about three more questions that I think we have time for. This next one, actually, next two will be for me, but the first one is very close to that. What is the dilution risk either from the current notes converting or other things? And on the $250,000 of shares, you know, that's, excuse me, convertible notes, you know, that's, at $0.50 a day, that's about 500,000 shares. So it's not huge in the grand scheme of things. Though we are trying to, and as Dante had alluded to, you know, we have the ELOC that we've talked about since October of 2022, and we use it very sparingly, in small amounts, not to drive anything. And, and so that's kind of the dilution risk.
When we look at these acquisitions, and this is the anything else, we look at acquisitions, we're looking at the proper balance of debt or this volumetric funding or equity if it's accretive, if it makes sense. You know, so like the mean five shares that we took out, the preferred shares, that made sense, because it took out $27 million of redemption value, for really a minor amount of the number of shares that could have been converted. I mean, so that's how we address that. The next one is also for me. What is the 2026 crude oil price values that you plan and anticipate to hedge? We have hedged a quarter of our production through the first quarter of 2026 at $62.50. And we watch it, and, you know, we'll probably get up into the 50-70% max.
Now, if it goes crazy, we'll get closer to 70% oil price goes. But we watch it. I check it every day. If the price goes up enough to lock in more over $62.50, I may, but I really want it to be much higher than that. We're gonna have to watch it, the market, what's going on at the time, what we've got going on at the time, and to make certain that we are properly covered. We don't have any bank governance or anything like that that requires it. That's where we are with respect to the hedging. This will be a good one for you to finish, Dante. This will be the last question, I believe. It's an acquisition by a big player. Can that be considered? I don't understand the question.
An acquisition by a big play, can we be acquired by a big player? I'm guessing that's what it's saying, but are we willing? I take it both ways. Are we gonna be swallowed, or would we swallow somebody else?
Dante Caravaggio, CEO and President, EON Resources: Yeah. Okay. I'll handle that. I mean, for $1 trillion, we'll sell. For $1 trillion. The issue is the marketplace is very sophisticated. They're not gonna give us what we're worth. And almost, very few people will pay us what the value is of the oil in the ground. They will pay us for the value of the oil barrels coming out of the ground that have been doing so for the last, say, year or two. With us, where we have a huge inventory of drilling and workovers, nobody's gonna pay us what we're worth. I don't think, you know, and we're not gonna sell unless somebody paid us what we're worth. I think the answer is, for bargain basement hunter, we're not for sale.
For somebody that wants 92 wells to drill and wants 500 wells to work over, and a management team that knows how to do things without selling much stock and without taking on debt, yeah, for the right price, sure. I think we're way better off serving our shareholders by doing what we've been doing, keeping our promise, buy more quality assets with a lot of inventory baked in, paying them nothing for the inventory, paying them a fair price for their PDP, producing, develop, producing, proven reserves, and, you know, getting a crazy good return on our money for our shareholders. We think the future's bright, and we think there's no better place to be. We're all motivated. We've had almost no turnover in our management ranks. We think our employees are happy, and they're working safe.
You add all that up, and I think we're a good bet. I'll turn it back over to Matthew to wrap it up, please.
David Smith, General Counsel, EON Resources: Thank you. Everyone, this concludes today's event. You may disconnect at this time and have a wonderful day. Thank you for your participation.
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