Earnings call transcript: Viper Energy Q3 2025 beats EPS expectations

Viper Energy Inc. (VNOM) exceeded earnings expectations for the third quarter of 2025, reporting an earnings per share (EPS) of $1.04, significantly surpassing the forecasted $0.37. This marked an earnings surprise of 181.08%. The company’s revenue also outpaced projections, coming in at $418 million compared to the expected $395.91 million. Despite these strong financial results, Viper’s stock declined by 2.11%, closing at $37.82, with a further decrease of 1.14% in premarket trading.

Key Takeaways

• Viper Energy reported a strong EPS of $1.04, beating forecasts by a wide margin.
• Revenue reached $418 million, exceeding expectations by 5.58%.
• The company’s stock fell by 2.11% despite the positive earnings report.
• Viper returned 85% of cash available for distribution in Q3.
• The company completed significant share repurchases and increased dividends.

Company Performance

Viper Energy demonstrated robust performance in Q3 2025, driven by strategic initiatives and operational efficiencies. The company returned 85% of its cash available for distribution, highlighting its commitment to rewarding shareholders. Viper also completed over $90 million in share repurchases and increased its dividend by nearly 10% from the previous quarter. The total return of capital per class A share rose by 48% compared to Q2.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: $418 million, up from a forecast of $395.91 million
• Earnings per share: $1.04, significantly higher than the $0.37 forecast
• Dividend yield: >6% annualized
• Share repurchases: Over $90 million completed

Earnings vs. Forecast

Viper Energy’s Q3 2025 earnings significantly outperformed expectations, with an EPS of $1.04 against a forecast of $0.37, marking a surprise of 181.08%. Revenue also exceeded predictions, reaching $418 million compared to the anticipated $395.91 million, a 5.58% surprise. This performance represents a substantial improvement over previous quarters.

Market Reaction

Despite exceeding earnings expectations, Viper Energy’s stock fell by 2.11% to close at $37.82. In premarket trading, the stock saw a further decline of 1.14%. This downward movement contrasts with the company’s strong financial performance and may reflect broader market trends or investor concerns regarding future growth prospects.

Outlook & Guidance

Looking ahead, Viper Energy anticipates mid-single-digit organic oil production growth in 2026, with Q4 2025 oil production guidance implying a 20% year-over-year increase. The company plans to use proceeds from a recent asset sale to pay down debt and aims to return nearly 100% of cash available for distribution.

Executive Commentary

CEO Kaes Van’t Hof emphasized Viper’s unique position within the energy sector, stating, "Viper presents a differentiated investment opportunity within the broader energy space." He also highlighted the company’s aggressive approach to share buybacks, saying, "We’re going to be a little aggressive as we head into year-end with the buybacks."

Risks and Challenges

• Oil price volatility could impact revenue and profitability.
• Market expectations of zero oil growth in the Permian Basin in 2026.
• Integration risks associated with the CTO acquisition.
• Potential changes in regulatory policies affecting the energy sector.
• Economic uncertainties that could affect investor sentiment.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about the potential use of Diamondback’s free cash to purchase Viper shares and explored opportunities in AI and automation. Concerns were also raised about the impact of new shareholders following the CTO acquisition, which executives addressed by emphasizing strategic alignment and growth potential.

Full transcript - Viper Energy Inc (VNOM) Q3 2025:

Amber, Conference Call Operator: Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Viper Energy third quarter 2025 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker’s presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one-one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising that your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one-one again. Please be advised that today’s conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Chip Seale, Investor Relations Director. Please go ahead.

Chip Seale, Investor Relations Director, Viper Energy: Thank you, Amber. Good morning and welcome to Viper Energy’s third 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 with the appropriate GAAP measures can be found in our earnings release issued yesterday afternoon. I will now turn the call over to Kaes.

Kaes Van’t Hof, CEO, Viper Energy: Thank you, Chip. Welcome, everyone, and thank you for listening to Viper Energy’s third quarter 2025 conference call. During the third quarter, Viper continued to execute on our growth strategy bolstered by the closing of the CTO acquisition and continued organic growth. Our fourth quarter 2025 oil production guidance implies a roughly 20% increase in oil production per share compared to the same quarter last year. Looking ahead to next year, 2026, we continue to anticipate mid-single-digit organic oil production growth from fourth quarter 2025 estimated production. This implies double-digit year-over-year growth in oil production per share relative to 2025. Viper also showcased our differentiated return of capital profile in the third quarter.

Because of our high operating and free cash flow margins, strong balance sheet, and recent signing of our non-Permian asset sale, we felt it appropriate to lean into our return of capital commitment and return 85% of cash available for distribution in the third quarter to stockholders. As a result, Viper is delivering on multiple strategic capital allocation fronts this quarter. Our combined base plus variable dividend represents a greater than 6% annualized yield and an increase of almost 10% relative to our dividend from last quarter. This dividend increase is combined with over $90 million of share repurchases completed during the quarter and an incremental $60 million being retained to go to the balance sheet. In total, third quarter return of capital per class A share represents a 48% increase versus the second quarter.

Looking ahead as we move to close our non-Permian asset sale and as a result move closer to our long-term net debt target of $1.5 billion, we will have line of sight to return nearly 100% of cash available for distribution to stockholders. We continue to expect to continue to allocate the majority of our cash for distribution to our base plus variable dividend, but feel compelled to buy back shares in today’s market given the current market dislocation and unique opportunity to invest countercyclically by increasing our ownership in our existing high-quality mineral and royalty assets. Importantly, the share repurchases done today will further enhance our growth in per share metrics and allow us to distribute more through our base plus variable dividend over the long term.

On the operational front, we continue to see strong activity levels across our asset base and as a result continue to expect mid-single-digit organic growth in 2026 despite the commodity price volatility we have seen over the past several quarters. Following the closing of the CTO acquisition, Viper is positioned to benefit from a best of both worlds situation. Viper continues to own concentrated interests under Diamondback’s core Midland Basin development, which is expected to drive meaningful long-term oil production growth. In addition, Viper now has broad exposure to leading third-party operators across both the Midland and Delaware basins, and our current acreage position has consistently captured almost half of all third-party activity in the Permian. Beyond this, the 25,000 existing horizontal wells in the Permian Basin in which Viper owns an interest provides an invaluable information advantage.

In conclusion, we continue to believe that Viper presents a differentiated investment opportunity within the broader energy space. Viper’s unmatched ability to deliver sustained per share growth with zero capital and limited operating costs should result in a differential ability to return increasing amounts of capital to stockholders over the long term. Additionally, given our extremely low breakeven, our business model should provide a more consistent cash flow returns profile during times of overall market volatility. Operator, please open the line for questions.

Amber, Conference Call Operator: Thank you. At this time, we will conduct the question and answer session. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star one-one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one-one again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from Neal Dingmann of William Blair. Your line is now open.

Hey, morning still, Kaes. Great free cash flow story, obviously. My first question has just turned into, given the nearly $700 million asset sale and what should be probably even over $1.5 billion of free cash flow next year, could you speak to sort of near-term and 2026 capital allocation? I mean, as I see it, it seems like you’ll not only quickly repay that debt, but you could bump distributions up materially and potentially do some buybacks. Would love to hear how you’re thinking of it.

Kaes Van’t Hof, CEO, Viper Energy: Yeah, Neil, I feel like we got a great number on that asset sale, and we debated internally if we should wait or execute on the sale. We decided to execute, and the reason being, you recall last quarter, we came out and said, "When Viper gets to $1.5 billion of net debt, we’re going to return 100% of free cash back to shareholders." And with this asset sale proceeds coming in, we feel like we have line of sight to that goal. And so therefore, we’re going to lean in ahead of that by adding some repurchases to our story, just given how much the market dislocation has widened between Viper and where it should trade. So, high level, I think by the beginning of the year next year, we’ll be ready to consistently return almost 100% of free cash to shareholders, but we’re not going to stop now.

We’re going to be a little aggressive as we head into year-end with the buybacks, plus a significant continued cash distribution story.

That kind of leads to my second question. Is that predicated, I guess, or maybe ask another way? Could you just speak to how activity outside of Diamondback is trending? It seems like, judging by last quarter, things still appear very active, even more active than what we’re seeing from some of these operators out there, but really just want to confirm that’s still the case.

Yeah, I think it’s really strong. I’ll let Austen give some more detail, but this is the first quarter we’re looking at a combined Viper and CTO together, and we think that gives us a broad exposure to a lot of the Permian. Yeah, I mean, we put some new details in the deck, page 11 being one of those. And what this really does is go back to the beginning of 2023 and looks at all of the wells drilled across the Permian Basin, excluding Diamondback, and what percentage of those Viper’s current asset base would have an interest in. And what you’ll see is that we’ve just captured almost half of all activity across the basin over this time period with a pretty consistent average NRI right around 1.5%. So.

It’ll trend up and down kind of with activity a bit, but I really think it speaks to the quality of the acreage and the operators that we have outside of Diamondback deploying consistent capital to this position. That gives a lot of confidence to the forecast of 2026 and really even beyond that.

Makes sense. Thanks, boys.

Thank you.

Amber, Conference Call Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Betty Jiang of Barclays. Your line is now open.

Hi. Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to ask about the third-party activity. Also, just on the backlog has continued to increase, but even. I want to understand how much of that increase is driven by the CTO contribution and how much is seeing a broader constructive uplift that you’re seeing across the legacy assets from other operators across the Permian.

Kaes Van’t Hof, CEO, Viper Energy: Yeah, Betty, I would say it’s pretty evenly mixed. I think being a couple of months in post-CTO closing, that asset base has outperformed the underwriting assumptions, but really legacy Viper’s third-party operator position has continued to outperform as well, mainly as a result of some of the higher NRIs, and you can kind of see that showing up. On slide 11, as I mentioned. So. As we look at it today, right, we don’t have full visibility into what will happen for the full year 2026, especially in the back half of the year, and we’ll continue to monitor new activity as it shows up and the conversion of those permits and those wells that have been spud, but I would say generally we’re extremely pleased with the third-party exposure and especially the complement that that provides to the concentrated exposure through the Diamondback drill bit.

Yeah, those are really encouraging signs to see. My second question is on AI. It strikes me that the royalty model is ideally positioned to benefit from AI integration. And thinking about the impact on the predictive nature of future activity, maybe deal valuation, can you just speak to how you see the tools that’s available today could potentially impact your operations and M&A?

Yeah, Betty, I mean, I would say generally you’re correct, right? There’s a lot of data flowing through the mineral business. There’s a lot of data on 35,000 wells throughout the Permian that can be utilized for a lot of things, right? We can use that data to make operational changes, to buy more minerals in areas where something is emerging. But I think in the near term, some of the benefit of AI and automation and machine learning is really to make our business more efficient on the back end, right? Tracking 35,000 wells every month should not be a manual process. And so we’re working to move everything from manual to automated. And then beyond that, it’s about finding a way to utilize all this data effectively and efficiently and even potentially monetize it. Should we not see that it provides us a differential advantage?

I think it can provide a lot of data to the market. But for now, we’re going to keep it all internal, and I think focus on some of the automation. And that’s actually one of the synergies that the CTO team brought to the table that we hadn’t developed ourselves at Viper. So with all these deals, we end up learning something. And I’d say the biggest thing from the CTO team has been big data and automation.

Very interesting. Thank you.

Amber, Conference Call Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Neil Mehta of Goldman Sachs & Company. Your line is open.

Yeah, thanks so much. Just congrats on some of the non-Permian divestitures. And it’s good to see the business kind of core up around the Permian again. As we think about the cash that’s coming in, Kaes, are there any considerations we should be mindful of in terms of the number that’s coming in? Are there any offsets, whether it’s taxes or anything else, around these inflows?

Kaes Van’t Hof, CEO, Viper Energy: Yeah, we kind of highlighted that there would be a little bit of a tax hit. So I think our net proceeds would be about $610 million. There will be some reduction between effective date and close date. But all in all, I think generally the proceeds are going to pay down essentially the revolver to zero, as well as almost pay our term loan down to essentially zero. And that would put essentially a balance sheet I define as an almost perfect position with one 5-year note, one 10-year note that we executed over the summer, leaving us a lot of optionality and flexibility to buy little deals, but also return a lot of cash to shareholders.

Yeah. And Kaes, can you talk about the A&D market? That’s been kind of a hallmark of the broader Diamondback complex, finding those bolt-on opportunities. You think, especially given the softer commodity price environment, that’s going to-does that make it easier or harder to get deals done here over the next 6-12 months?

Yeah, traditionally, it makes mineral deals harder to get done. You see a lot more upstream deals lower in the cycle than minerals just because of the zero CapEx nature of minerals. So I think we’re probably on a bit of a pause at Viper for now and waiting for what we see as still a significant opportunity set to come our way in the coming years. But Austen, anything else you want to add? Yeah, I think that’s certainly the case on the larger, more strategic acquisitions. We’ve tried to position ourselves to be the consolidator of choice on the billion-dollar-plus type opportunities. And it’s tough to see those transacting with where commodity prices are today. I would say it’s a little bit different on kind of the smaller ground game type acquisitions.

We’ve had some success, and some of those owners might see their royalty checks go down and see that as an opportunity to liquidate it. But that’s tougher to scale today relative to the size of enterprise value, at least. So part of our thinking additionally is with the buyback, that’s an effective way to buy really high-quality assets that we know and that are worth the assets today. So it’s kind of a combined strategy of how to deploy capital for us today.

Yep. Thanks, Austen. Thanks, Kaes.

Amber, Conference Call Operator: Thank you.

Kaes Van’t Hof, CEO, Viper Energy: Thanks, Neil.

Amber, Conference Call Operator: Our next question comes from Kailey Akamine of Bank of America. Your line is now open.

Hey, good morning, guys. Kaes van’t Hof, in your opening remarks, you called out that Viper has been exposed to about half of all third-party activity in the Permian Basin over the last three years. In the basin this year, there has been a reduction in activity because of oil price uncertainty. The market expects maybe zero oil growth in the Permian Basin next year, yet your Permian volumes continue to grow. That’s a favorable dynamic. How long do you expect that it can continue?

Kaes Van’t Hof, CEO, Viper Energy: Yeah, I mean, I think the advantage nature of the Diamondback-Viper relationship probably drives that. Growth for at least the next couple of years, if not longer. I think we have somewhere between a 5% and 7% interest expected in all of Diamondback’s wells on average for the next five years. So that’s a pretty unique position to be in. And I think that combined with the, in our remarks, we kind of highlighted that that combined with the broad exposure otherwise puts us in a pretty good spot here for the next few years.

I appreciate that. For my next question, one question that we get from investors concerns the valuation of Viper. It’s the best risk-adjusted return in the Permian, in our view. Another way to look at it is that VNOM shares are trading with great value today. So my question is, would you ever consider using free cash at FANG to purchase more interest in VNOM shares?

Yeah, it’s certainly on the table. I think Diamondback has some strategic priorities that they need to continue to execute on, mainly reducing its share count as well. But we certainly are kind of trying to pound the table on Viper’s valuation. And also, I think that’s part of the rationale for the non-Permian asset sale getting executed so quickly is that we can lean in at the Viper level and reduce that Viper share count because I think until the market wakes up to the free cash flow yield plus growth story, we’re going to try to take advantage of it as a complex.

I appreciate the comments. Thanks, Kaes.

Amber, Conference Call Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Derrick Whitfield of Texas Capital. Your line is now open.

Austen Gilfillian, President, Viper Energy: Thanks. Good morning, Alan. Thanks for taking my question. For my first question, I wanted to start with your guidance regarding the soft guide for 2026. How are you thinking about the price sensitivity associated with that guidance from a Diamondback operator perspective?

Kaes Van’t Hof, CEO, Viper Energy: Yeah, so that really contemplates the base case of Diamondback’s current activity levels, right, and really maintaining that more maintenance level through 2026. So to draw on their analogy, being in the yellow light scenario, that’s kind of what’s underwritten here. Things could flex up or down. I think the beauty of the relationship, and Kaes was hitting on it earlier, to the extent that it flexes down, Diamondback will really be prioritizing the highest returning projects in the lower commodity price environment. So Viper tends to be insulated, at least in gross reductions in Diamondback activity level, and just kind of gets a higher percent exposure and a higher average NRI.

Austen Gilfillian, President, Viper Energy: Got it. Makes sense. And then, maybe just to build on an earlier question with the benefit of more time with the CTO team and their approach, could you guys elaborate on the synergy opportunity you see from a cash savings perspective on just implementing some of the AI processes? And then the opportunity to generate from a ground game perspective?

Kaes Van’t Hof, CEO, Viper Energy: Yeah, I would say obviously the employee aspect of the deal and those synergies have been realized, and we brought over some select high performers from CTO that are helping us out today. Second to that, one of the big synergies was cost of capital savings on the debt, on both their debt and ours. It was clear that Viper got upgraded to investment grade and was able to execute its first investment grade deal in the quarter in July. And so that sets us up from a balance sheet perspective. Then I think on the automation side, there’s certainly benefits to automating the processes at Viper. I think over time, those same people that are working on automating those processes at Viper will then move to automate more at Diamondback. So it’s kind of a synergy to the parent company as well.

I can’t tell you exactly what that number is going to be today, but I think a lot of our business is going to be moving towards less manual entry and more observing by exception versus doing things by hand. So I think a lot to come there. I think the whole industry is working to continue to automate, but you can expect us to be on our front foot. Then on the deal side, I think being in Midland, we have pretty good access to all the deals. There’s a saying out here that if a deal leaves Midland, that means it might not be a good deal. So we’re on the front foot here in the mix, and we have really good deal flow.

Austen Gilfillian, President, Viper Energy: Great color. I’ll turn it back to the operator.

Amber, Conference Call Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Leo Mariani of Roth. Your line is now open.

Speaker 5: Hi, guys. I just wanted to clarify on the guidance here. I know it’s soft guide for 2026, but when you guys talk about mid-single digit growth next year versus 4Q, I assume that’s kind of unadjusted for the pending asset sale. So clearly, as we strip those volumes out, then you kind of wouldn’t quite hit that mid-single digit growth. It’d be a little bit lower. That’s kind of a pre-asset sale guide here.

Kaes Van’t Hof, CEO, Viper Energy: Yeah, I mean, it’s either if you look at Q4 being pro forma, right, really the way to look at it is you’re going to have a couple thousand barrels a day of growth on an absolute basis on the assets that we’ll retain. So the Q4 guidance of 66,000 barrels a day of oil at the midpoint, that includes about 5,000 barrels a day of contributions to the non-Permian assets. So if you strip that out, that’ll be your go-forward starting point for 2026, and then you’ll grow a couple thousand barrels from there, which kind of gets you to that mid-single digit level.

Speaker 5: Okay. Appreciate that clarification. And obviously, you’ve got the asset sale done, and you certainly spoke to returning a greater percentage of capital to shareholders. You clearly leaned into the buyback pretty heavily, but just trying to get a sense as that debt is paid off, as you kind of spoke to, it sounds like, in the next handful of months. Are you guys also looking to maybe kind of accelerate the growth in the variable dividend component as well over the next few quarters? Is that something that investors should also be looking forward to?

Kaes Van’t Hof, CEO, Viper Energy: Yeah, I mean, I think it’s all price-related, right? And the key point here on the buyback, which is, in our mind, our third priority return of capital behind the base dividend and the variable dividend, leaning into that buyback sends a pretty strong message that we think the stock’s cheap. We do agree with a lot of our large shareholders, Diamondback being the largest, that we want a majority of the return of capital in the form of cash. But I think what’s interesting about Viper, with the debt position it’s in, or the balance sheet position it’s in, is that it can do both. And I think we would, at some point, tap the brakes on the buyback if the market wakes up to this story. But until then, we’re going to keep reducing the share count.

All right. Thank you.

Amber, Conference Call Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Tim Rezvan from KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is now open.

Thanks for taking my questions, folks. I don’t mean to beat the dead horse here, but the repurchase news was really notable. It was equal to your prior two biggest quarters combined. So is it safe to say this was more of kind of an extreme quarter given shares at the 37, 38 level? Or would you potentially look to go even bigger at the expense of the variable dividend if you thought the dislocation warranted that?

Kaes Van’t Hof, CEO, Viper Energy: Yeah, I mean, Tim, I think it depends, right? But I think what’s interesting about, again, about Viper, here we are at $60 oil generating 92%-93% margins. There’s a lot of flexibility to do a lot of things with cash, right? I think if you put your E&P hat on, you’re restricted by how much capital you need to spend to maintain your production base. And here, other people are spending capital for you to maintain your production base. And so that frees up a lot of free cash to do different things with. I think if the market dislocates further, we can lean in further without compromising free cash flow generation or the balance sheet. So it’s truly, in my mind, it should theoretically be a lower-cost capital business than where it’s trading today.

Okay. Okay. I appreciate that response. And then on the topic of repurchases, there’s been some market consternation, perhaps overdue, about these new holders that you have following the CTO closing. And I believe there’s four, what people would call unnatural holders at about 13% of shares. Can you talk, Kaes, about any dialogue you’ve had with any of them and how high that is on your sort of kind of maybe removing that overhang or sort of addressing that as they look to sell? Thank you.

Yeah, we’ll be prepared to address it should they make the decision to sell. But in talking to a lot of them, particularly with respect to the CTO merger, they merged their stock into ours knowing that there is a lot of long-term upside to the combined business. So I can’t comment on if they want to or don’t want to sell because that’s their decision. But I will say we have the firepower to aid that if that ever happened. Just like any other shareholder, right? If there are any other large shareholders looking to sell here, we’ve got the firepower to buy those shares back.

Okay. That’s all I had. Thank you.

Amber, Conference Call Operator: Thank you. I am showing no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn it back to the CEO, Kaes van’t Hof, for closing remarks.

Kaes Van’t Hof, CEO, Viper Energy: Thanks, everybody, for participating today. And please reach out if you have any questions, and we’ll talk to you in one quarter.

Amber, Conference Call Operator: Thank you for your participation in today’s conference. This does conclude the program, and you may now disconnect.

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