Vitesse Energy at EnerCom Denver: Strategic Insights and Future Outlook

On Monday, 18 August 2025, Vitesse Energy (NYSE:VTS) presented its strategic vision at the EnerCom Denver – The Energy Investment Conference. The company detailed its commitment to a sustainable dividend yield and a prudent risk management strategy. While emphasizing its strengths in operational efficiency and resource management, Vitesse also acknowledged the challenges in maintaining leverage and adapting to market fluctuations.

Key Takeaways

• Vitesse Energy maintains a fixed dividend yield of 9%, which has been increased twice since its IPO in 2023.
• The company has 80% of its resources undeveloped, offering 30 years of potential cash flow.
• A $195 million acquisition of Lucero was financed with equity, enhancing the company’s financial stability.
• Vitesse employs a robust hedging strategy, with 70% of oil production hedged through 2026.
• The proprietary Luminous system enhances operational efficiency through data and AI.

Financial Results

• Dividend Strategy: Vitesse prioritizes its dividend, viewing it as the primary product rather than oil and gas production. The dividend yield stands at 9%, with increases post-IPO.
• Acquisitions: The Lucero acquisition, valued at $195 million, was financed entirely with equity and included $50 million in net cash, reducing debt to half of EBITDA.
• Leverage: The company has consistently maintained leverage below one times EBITDA, ensuring financial stability.

Operational Updates

• Resource Development: With 80% of its resources undeveloped, Vitesse plans to convert these into cash flow over the next 30 years.
• Drilling and Production: Drilling costs have decreased by 26% since 2014, and production has increased by 75% from 2014 to 2024.
• Rig Activity: As of last Thursday, 47% of rigs in the Bakken were operating on Vitesse’s acreage.
• Production Volume: Second-quarter production reached 18,950 BOE per day, marking a 46% increase over 2024.

Future Outlook

• Hedging Strategy: Vitesse has hedged 70% of its oil production for 2025 and 2026 to stabilize returns and protect its dividend.
• Technology and Innovation: The Luminous system, enhanced with AI capabilities, supports data analysis and operational decision-making.
• Capital Allocation: The company focuses on high-return CAPEX investments over share repurchases, with a $60 million share repurchase plan in place.

Q&A Highlights

• Dividend Focus: Ben Messier emphasized that every decision aims to support and increase the dividend.
• Operational Efficiency: Messier noted the significant reduction in drilling costs, positioning Vitesse as a hedge against inflation.

In conclusion, Vitesse Energy’s strategic focus on dividends, operational efficiency, and risk management positions it well for future growth. For more details, refer to the full conference call transcript below.

Full transcript - EnerCom Denver – The Energy Investment Conference:

Max Silverman, Director, Petrie Partners: Good morning everyone. I’m Max Silverman, a director with Petrie Partners in our Denver office. Petrie is a proud sponsor of Entercom. It’s such a great event for not only for Denver but the broader energy community.

I’m pleased to introduce our next speaker Ben Messier, Director of Investor Relations and Business Development with Vitesse Energy. Please join me in welcoming Ben to the stage.

Ben Messier, Director of Investor Relations and Business Development, Vitesse Energy: Thank you Max. It’s good following up British Petroleum today. Think you’ll see a lot of similarities between our businesses. All right, so today I’m going to start with some reasons to invest in and then I’ll circle back to our founding thesis over a decade ago to explain how we ended up with such a unique company. At Vitesse our product is our dividend.

We have a 9% fixed dividend yield and have increased the dividend twice since going public in 2023. Every decision we make is with the end goal of supporting and ultimately increasing the dividend. This results in different decision making than if we viewed oil and gas production as our product, which I’ll get into later. 80% of our resource is still undeveloped and will be converted to cash flow over the next thirty years. To supplement this high return drilling on our organic asset, we’ve made close to 200 acquisitions ranging from a few thousand dollars to $250,000,000 all with accretion to the dividend in mind.

Another key pillar of Vitesse’s strategy is risk management, which affects how we finance larger acquisitions. In March, we closed a $195,000,000 acquisition of Lucero using 100% equity. The deal was accretive to all key financial metrics and also brought in $50,000,000 of net cash, which reduced our debt to about half of our EBITDA. It is rare that an acquisition that has a quarter of the value in cash drag can still be accretive to cash flow metrics. In the history of the company, Vitesse has never let leverage exceed one times.

The morning we announced the Lucero acquisition, we hedged the maximum allowable amount of oil production on the asset through 2026, protecting the strong underwritten rate of return. While we are primarily focused on Bakken non op, we seek alpha wherever we can find it, as evidenced by this Lucero acquisition, which provided Vitesse with operational control of those assets. We’ve reviewed non operated, operated and minerals acquisitions in every basin across all commodity mixes. If an acquisition can support our dividend and improve our asset base, then we’re interested in looking at it. Vitesse is also a data company.

With interest in over 7,000 wells across 30 operators, using data to our advantage is critical to our success. Our proprietary data system Luminous makes us better investors. It allows us to underwrite more precisely and quickly identify trends on our asset base. Now I’ll end this slide with a quote from Milton Friedman. He said, Nobody spends somebody else’s money as carefully as he spends his own.

Nobody uses somebody else’s resources as carefully as he uses his own. So if you want efficiency and effectiveness, if you want knowledge to be properly utilized, you have to do it through the means of private property. Milton would likely approve of Vitess’ ownership group. Management and the board have substantial skin in the game, owning more than 25 of the company’s shares. Through their ownership, our three executives receive four times as much from the dividend than their salaries each year.

That alignment with shareholders keeps everyone driving towards the same goal, which we often summarize as don’t mess it up, except the actual word we use isn’t mess. So how did we get here? So in 2010, our CEO and founder Bob Garrity and his wife, Gwen, sat at their kitchen table around a map of the Bakken circling blocks of undeveloped acreage they could acquire outside the core of the Bakken. Their thesis was that with time, drilling technology would improve and the basin would get deeper, denser, cheaper, better, and expanded, making their acquired acreage much more valuable when it ultimately got drilled. By 2013, Lucadia caught interest in this thesis, committing $50,000,000 to Vitesse.

And after merging with Jefferies, continued increasing their investment to $500,000,000 by 2018 to fund additional acquisitions of highly undeveloped acreage. This is how Vitesse’s resource is still 80% undeveloped despite being in a mature basin. So eleven years after the initial funding from Jefferies Financial Group, I thought it would be interesting to see how Vitesse’s founding thesis has played out in the Bakken. So we’ll start with deeper. In 2010, drilling focused on the Middle Bakken and Forks. Upper

Since 2013, three eighty wells have been drilled in the Middle 3 Forks and about 50 wells have been drilled lower in the Lower 3 Forks. Continental is currently drilling a well targeting the Winnipeg Formation. Potential remains for more resource to be extracted from these deeper formations. Then we’ll go to denser. It is estimated that average well spacing in the Bakken has decreased from about 1,000 feet in 2014 to 700 feet in 2025.

By optimizing operators maximize oil recovery while minimizing interference between wells, ultimately leading to improved economics. The next two categories are the most interesting in my opinion and have directly led to improved returns in the basin. Cheaper. In 2014, well proposals on our asset had averaged drilling and completion costs of $973 per lateral foot. In 2025, they were down to $716 per lateral foot, a 26% decline from 2014 levels.

If you want to adjust those numbers for inflation, those costs are 46% lower since 2014. This is despite frac sizes growing substantially over that time period. Better. In 2014, Bakken wells produced 12 BOE per lateral foot in the first twelve months. 2024 wells averaged 21 BOE per lateral foot, a 75% increase since Jeffrey’s initial investment in Vitesse.

Most remarkably, this improvement in production results happened as drilling expanded outside the core of the basin to what was thought to be lower tier acreage. So speaking of expanded, that’s the last piece here and I think this map on the right shows that. But the black lines represent producing wells and drilling activity has expanded outside of the core into the acreage Vitesse owns. This formerly lower tier acreage is generating returns as strong as the Tier one acreage when it was heavily developed. These technological improvements are nowhere near plateauing as we have seen promising results on three mile and four mile laterals, horseshoe laterals and refracs in recent months.

The NAVs of our research analysts and our SEC proved PV-ten do not account for these trends of lower costs, more production and ultimately better returns as the deeper, denser, cheaper, better expanded thesis continues to play out while our asset gets developed over the next three decades. Part of our approach to risk management is ensuring that no single well has a meaningful impact on Vitesse’s results. We have a 3.6% average working interest in more than 7,500 wells or one third of the producing Bakken wells and across more than 30 operators making us like a mutual fund for the Bakken. As of last Thursday, 47% of the rigs operating in the basin were drilling on Vitesse’s acreage. If you believe the basin will continue to improve, then Vitesse will realize the benefits.

Our non operated approach allows us to gain exposure to the cost efficiencies and learnings of our large cap operators like ConocoPhillips, Devon, Chevron and EOG, even though we only have a $1,000,000,000 market cap. You’ll notice that 10% of our acreage is operated by Vitesse and is located in the best rock in the basin. This came from the Lucero acquisition as I mentioned earlier, which provided us with a small operated leg to our strategy. With 25 net operated locations in two DUCs, we have the optionality to funnel capital towards drilling our operated wells if we choose to supplement our non op CapEx. All of these Tiny Wells’ interests aggregated to generate 18,950 BOE per day of production in the second quarter, a 46% increase over 2024 production.

As I mentioned earlier, we view the dividend, not oil and gas production, as our product. While this level of production growth ultimately drives the dividend higher, we are happy to let production decline in times of uncertainty. We do not seek growth for growth’s sake. Rather, we choose to drill wells when the economics meet our stringent return hurdles. Protecting free cash flow and preserving the balance sheet are our top priorities.

Of our 200 net remaining locations, only 38.4 are in our proved PV-ten of $8.00 $6,000,000 as we are limited by the SEC to include only wells that we will be drilled in the next five years. Because we are a non op with limited control, we are conservative in that estimate. So as the deeper, denser, cheaper, better expanded thesis continues to play out, our resource will generate value far beyond those numbers. Holding production flat at the midpoint of our guidance requires about $95,000,000 of maintenance CapEx, representing only a 50% reinvestment rate. This reflects our ability to invest capital at high rates of return, so we can fund our dividend and still have room to make attractive acquisitions within cash flow.

An ancillary benefit of having a large fixed dividend is that it holds us accountable to effectively allocate capital. We must invest to maximize free cash flow in the near, medium, and long term. After we pay about $90,000,000 of dividends each year, we allocate our cash flow in order of rates of return, which are listed from left to right, from highest to lowest rates of return on the chart over there. The most economic way to spend capital is on our organic drilling, which has ranged anywhere from 45 to 90,000,000 on our non operated acreage in recent years. This variability is why it is great to have high return operated locations that we can also drill when non op well proposals are light.

We consent to over 90% of AFEs through the full oil price cycle, which is a testament to the quality of the drilling of our operating partners. The next highest rate of return comes from our near term development acquisitions. There’s a robust market of non op AFEs that trade with acquisition costs ranging from a few thousand to a few million dollars per AFE. Sellers include family offices and individuals that can’t afford to fund the capital call, brokers, and other Bakken operators that didn’t budget for non op AFEs to come in the door. Sellers prefer buyers with certainty of closing and ability to analyze these opportunities quickly as non op partners typically only have thirty days to decide whether to consent to a well proposal.

Due to our vast data set and experienced deal team, we provide the sellers with offers within a week and have high certainty in our underwriting. Last year, we analyzed three seventy one near term drilling opportunities. We bid on 126 of them. 14 of those offers were accepted, equating to an 11% hit rate and $47,000,000 of associated CapEx. We could win a higher percentage of these opportunities if we lowered our return hurdles, but as I mentioned, we are not going to compromise returns for production growth.

Next we have larger acquisitions which we like to call fat pitch acquisitions. We have a picture of Ted Williams in our conference room because he only swung at pitches that were in his sweet spot, which made him the last baseball player to bat 400 in a season in 1941. While we have analyzed hundreds of large assets, we have only won four of these fat pitch acquisitions north of $50,000,000 in our history. None of these were marketed processes and each of them had some degree of hair that we were uniquely suited to extract value from. Today, our criteria when making acquisitions is to provide immediate accretion to the dividend, maintain low leverage, and avoid overhang from large shareholdings.

The Lucero acquisition we closed this year checked all these boxes, as it enabled us to raise our dividend 7%, their net cash position reduced our leverage, and their largest shareholder, First Reserve, now owns only 7% of Vitesse and has actually become an invaluable partner in reviewing acquisition opportunities outside the Bakken. Since closing the acquisition, Vitesse’s average daily trading volume has more than doubled to $8,000,000 per day, providing our investors with substantial liquidity for a company our size. Additionally, we have had discussions with dozens of potential operating and non operating partners that can help us finance larger acquisitions. Each partner has bespoke check sizes, capabilities, and goals. So we can call upon the optimal partner depending on the qualities of each opportunity that we review.

If anyone in the audience has a deal they want to review with us, feel free to reach out. When we spun off from Jefferies in January 2023, we immediately implemented a 60,000,000 share buyback repurchase plan with the idea that we would be able to buy back shares at a discount while our shareholder base churned. Ultimately, repurchased less than $1,000,000 of shares as our shareholders quickly turned over and our price increased. Today, we’re unlikely to buy back shares as long as high return CapEx remains plentiful. Finally, if we have excess free cash flow after paying our dividend and funding drilling and acquisitions like we did in the second quarter of this year, we will pay down our revolving credit facility.

Our debt balance fluctuates from quarter to quarter depending on the acquisition opportunity set, but ultimately we aim to keep our leverage below one times EBITDA over the long run. Our custom built data system Luminous makes us better investors. With interests in over 7,500 wells, we receive a lot of proprietary data. We meticulously track every detail from proposed versus actual drilling and completion costs to the timing of cash flows, whether it’s when operators send Us bills or revenues because even small shifts in timing can have a meaningful impact on internal rate of return. Luminous combines this private data with publicly available production statistics to improve the accuracy of our underwriting, of acquisitions, and drilling proposed on our acreage.

This year we incorporated an AI chatbot into Luminous and have been training it with our internal data, textbooks, SEC filings, equity research reports, and live fact set and inverse streams. The chatbot tailors its answers to each department differently, allowing users to interface with the data as it best suits them. For example, I used it to analyze a multivariate regression output that ultimately guided our NGL hedging decisions. I’ve also used it to screen for acquisition opportunities that meet Vitesse’s stringent criteria, to draft offer letters and to provide preliminary reviews of NDAs. It may have also written this speech.

Our accountants use it to review 10 Qs for consistency to provide guidance on accounting rules and to take a first pass at drafting memos. While our asset in North Dakota becomes more efficient, so do our employees in Denver. Ultimately Luminous and our non op strategy allow us to add additional assets without increasing G and A which is the whole point of this. So another key component of our risk management approach is our hedge book. See some Aegis people in the crowd.

So we methodically hedge our oil, natural gas, and NGL production at prices that support our dividend. Hedging is also a free way to reduce the volatility of our stock price, improving our risk adjusted return metrics, and lowering our cost of capital. In the last year, a chaotic one for stocks, Vitesse’s volatility has held firm at 35%, which is the lowest among our peer group and evidence that our risk management approach is paying off. We handle our hedging in house, pitting our counterparties against each other to get best pricing. Our hedge book is worth about $15,000,000 currently.

At the midpoint of our guidance, have 70% of our oil production hedged in 2025 just under $70 a barrel. In 2026, we are hedged at $66.43 per barrel. Oil is by far the most impactful commodity to our revenue stream. So while we use swaps for oil and NGLs, you might notice we hedge natural gas using collars into 2027. This is because there’s substantial call skew in natural gas with many quarters having as much as 200% upside versus downside relative to a swap when we executed the trade.

We then swapped the Chicago Citygate to Henry Hub basis as that pricing point is the highest correlation with our realized prices. Oil callers have the opposite dynamic known as put SKU, which is why we use swaps to hedge those volumes as well as our NGL volumes. As I mentioned earlier, we used our internal AI chatbot to assist in coming up with an optimal NGL hedge breakdown across ethane, propane, isobutane, normal butane, and natural gasoline swaps. So our weighted average swap price is $23.61 per barrel through the 2026. These hedges protect our dividend and position us to take advantage of acquisition opportunities that arise over the next couple of years regardless of the price environment.

So in summary, Vitesse provides a long term stream of cash flow that is exposed to improvements in drilling and completion technology that have continued since the first oil well was drilled. Through our heavy ownership, management has strong alignment with shareholders in protecting and growing the dividend. As drilling and completion costs decline while inflation drives oil prices higher, Vitesse offers a solid hedge to inflation. If you believe the government’s post COVID money printing and implementation of tariffs will drive prices higher, Vitesse could be a good way to protect against that. The Bakken is a world class rock and with exposure to nearly half of current drilling activity in the basin, Vitesse is uniquely positioned to benefit as the basin continues to get deeper, denser, cheaper, better, and expanded.

Thank

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