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Montage Resources Corporation (MR)
Q1Â 2019 Earnings Call
May. 8, 2019, 10:00 a.m. ET
Contents:
- Prepared Remarks
- Questions and Answers
- Call Participants
Prepared Remarks:
Operator
Greetings, welcome to the Montage Resources First Quarter 2019 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. (Operator Instruction) Please note this conference is being recorded.
I will now turn the conference over to your host, Douglas Kris, Vice President, Investor Relations. Mr. Kris you may now begin.
Douglas Kris -- Vice President, Investor Relations.
Good morning, and thank you for joining us for the Montage Resources first quarter 2019 earnings conference call. With me today are John Reinhart, President and Chief Executive Officer; Michael Hodges, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; Oleg Tolmachev, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer; and Mathew Rucker, Executive Vice President, Planning and Development.
If you have not received a copy of last night's press release regarding our first quarter 2019 financial and operating results, you can find a copy of it on our website at www.montageresources.com.
Today's discussion will highlight the company's operational and financial outperformance in the first quarter. As a reminder, Montage's first quarter 2019 consolidated results include two months of results from Eclipse Resources and one full month of consolidated earnings of the combined company to account for the merger with Blue Ridge Mountain Resources that closed on February 28th, 2019 forming Montage Resources.
Before we start our comments, I would like to point out our disclosures regarding cautionary statements in our press release and remind you that during this call, Montage management will make forward-looking statements. Such statements are based on our current judgments regarding factors that will impact the future performance of Montage Resources and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond Montage Resources' control.
Actual outcomes and results could materially differ from what is expressed, implied, or forecast in such statements. Information concerning these risk factors can also be found in the Company's filings with the SEC.
In addition, during this call, we do make reference to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliation to applicable GAAP measures can be found in our earnings release. We expect to file our 10-Q later this week, which will be accessible through our website or the SEC's EDGAR system.
I will now turn the call over to John Reinhart, our President and CEO.
John Reinhart -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Thank you, Doug, and thank you to everyone for listening to our call today. I'm pleased to provide highlights today on the company's outperformance in our first consolidated quarter, which includes production exceeding guidance, operating cost lower than guidance, outpacing our planned cycle time expectations and capital spending in line with expectations. All which facilitates positive revisions to our 2019 full year guidance.
The combined organization is realizing the synergies of bringing together two great operational teams and the guidance revisions primarily reflect the operational efficiencies realized today. We remain highly focused on continuing to lower costs, accelerate production, and enhance asset level and corporate returns, all while protecting the company's strong balance sheet and liquidity position.
Before moving into my prepared comments on highlights for the quarter, I would like to provide some brief commentary around the current stock valuation and what we believe is a disconnect from a more appropriate valuation of Montage based on the fundamentals of the company.
Based upon (inaudible) enterprise value, Montage enterprise value is trading at a discount to our combined year and 2018 PDP PV10 valuation that is approximately $995 million. On an enterprise value to EBITDAX metrics we trade around a 40% discount to our Appalachian peers and our small cap E&P peers despite having one of the lowest leverage ratios among both peer groups.
At 1.6 times net debt to pro forma LTM EBITDAX as of the end of the first quarter 2019. While we fully recognized that the natural gas macro environment has been challenging and investor sentiment regarding natural gas has been weak. We believe that Montage's current valuation possesses substantial upside especially in light of our strong results and operational execution capabilities.
We believe this current landscape provides a significant opportunity for those willing to recognize the potential for multiple expansion and who remain focused on the long-term prospects of the company focused on creating shareholder value. While we cannot control the price action in the stock market, we can control our continued execution focus by delivering on a plan that generates disciplined growth and protects the balance sheet.
With the support from everyone across the organization, we have successfully integrated and shifted our strategy to put into practice our Focus Five principles emphasizing enhance cycle times, development optimization and operational and corporate efficiencies. This strategic shift has resulted in significant progress in a short period of time and is exceeding expectations. This company has some of the best and brightest in the Appalachian Basin and empowering these professionals to make decisions to drive change has had an immediate and noticeable impact.
We are extremely excited about the future of the company and our ability to execute the plan we have set. I am highly confident that we have the right framework to achieve our strategic vision. Shifting to the first quarter highlights, our average daily production was approximately 408 million cubic feet equivalent per day, which beat the top end of our quarterly guidance range of 395 million cubic feet equivalent per day.
Production costs during the quarter were $1.41 per million cubic feet equivalent per day, which beat the low end of our quarterly guidance range of $1.55 per million cubic feet equivalent. The company's total pre-hedge revenue was $141 million for the quarter which was a 28% increase over 2018, which reflects the ongoing strategic decision to focus activity on our substantial inventory of liquids rich acreage.
Liquids production accounted for approximately 38% of our revenue attributable to production for the first quarter 2019. These results contributed to the company delivering an adjusted EBITDAX of $68.9 million for the quarter. Due to the execution outperformance regarding well results, costs, and cycle times, the company communicated revised full year guidance along with second quarter 2019 guidance in our press release last night.
These numbers reflect the outstanding pace and cadence of the execution team's successes with costs and cycle time improvements through the second quarter of 2019. The company remains on pace with expected capital expenditures and will remain very vigilant regarding capital run rate delivering superior results at or below our initial 2019 capital guidance range of $375 million to $400 million dollars. While increasing our full year production guidance to 520 million cubic feet per day to 540 million cubic feet per day or approximately 4%.
We continue to execute upon our two rig capital plan and during the first quarter of 2019, the company drilled 10 wells which were predominately focused in the liquids area of our acreage. Included in these numbers were four Marcellus wells that were drilled on existing Utica pads which will further improve our cost results.
The focus on accelerated highly economic liquids rich Marcellus wells in Ohio, highlights the development advantage of a core stack pay area in Ohio which we believe will provide a valuation uplift once the quality of these assets are fully appreciated. On the completion side, we completed nine wells which included five Utica dry gas and four Utica condensate wells in the quarter.
The completion costs and cycle times are currently running at or below our internal estimates. The execution team has been able to perform at a high level of efficiency by meaningfully reducing downtime between stages that facilitated an average of nine stages pump per day and pumping approximately 2.4 million pounds of sand per day per frac crew,which is a 20% improvement in pumping efficiency relative to the fourth quarter of 20138.
When combining the completion efficiencies with the timing optimization of facilities build outs, a significant improvement in turn-in-line timing and quicker cash flow generation is realized. The company continues to work to improve efficiencies, while service costs remain relatively flat in the Appalachian Basin today.
During the first quarter, we turned to sales three gross dry gas Utica wells. Two of which were wells that are part of the joint venture with Sequel Energy. Additionally, early in the quarter, the former Blue Ridge Mountain Resources operations team turned to sales the four well Woodchopper pad in the Utica condensate type curve area, and those wells are tracking approximately 10% better than our forecast.
This pad lies on the border of Washington County and Noble County Ohio and further expands our core liquids acreage to the south adding approximately 65 undeveloped locations to the Utica condensate window, which expands the total to approximately 185 locations and further provides condensate diversification across our asset base, that is a differentiator for Montage Resources.
The company remains focused on a accretive strategic options regarding accelerating inventory value as well as inorganic opportunities. As discussed previously, we remain very excited about the Northeast PA Flat Castle area and are currently evaluating options with potential counter-parties for assessment of value enhancing options regarding this high quality inventory. We will provide an update to this process as we've progressed these assessments as well as other relevant activity on this front. Again, it has been a great quarter for the company, and we look forward to continued great results as we deliver on our 2019 plan.
With that I'll turn the call over to Michael.
Michael Hodges -- Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Thanks, John. During the first quarter the company continued to achieve strong results in almost every area of the business. Adjusted revenue for the first quarter was approximately $129 million and adjusted EBITDAX was approximately $69 million. Both of which were above the previous year's quarterly results.
As Doug mentioned earlier, the results for the first quarter only included one month of impact of the merger with Blue Ridge Mountain Resources, and results for both revenues and EBITDAX would have been approximately 25% to 35% higher when assuming a full quarter of combined results. During the first quarter our all-in realized price was $3.59 per Mcfe, before the impact of cash settled derivatives and firm transportation.
Our natural gas price differential before transportation expense was negative $0.14 per Mcf compared to the average daily Henry Hub settled price during the quarter, which was better than guidance and analyst consensus expectations. This favorable differential was driven by the continued strength for in-basin pricing as well as our ability to sell gas into underutilized firm transportation assets owned by others at prices which were at a substantial premium to in-basin benchmark.
This strategic advantage, which we believe is a differentiator for Montage compared to its peers going forward is something we will look to further leverage as we consider all the options available to us to achieve the highest possible realization.
As the company has brought wells online and marketed production has continued to grow, we have quickly grown marketed production well beyond our firm transportation under contract, and we are selling incremental production in-basin at very tight differentials resulting in these outstanding net back.
Our per unit cash production cost for the first quarter were $1.41 cents per Mcfe, which included $0.41 per Mcfe in firm transportation expense. As we have begun to utilize the ability to realize NGL pricing in our Mariner East II contract this quarter, we have seen additional cash flow from this new sales outlet.
During the quarter, we added approximately $1 million in incremental cash flows from our Mariner East II contract above what we had been receiving selling under our previously contracted price. Please keep in mind that based on upon our review of the final agreements for our Mariner East II volume, we are netting certain downstream expenses incurred by third-parties against the gross sales price of our NGLs resulting in an offsetting amount of lower cash production cost and lower NGL price realizations than in prior guidance.
On the liquid side, we realized a $21.67 per barrel NGL price equating to approximately 40% of WTI. Our Mariner East II pricing which I mentioned previously coupled with the production sales volumes that are sold at strong Mont Belvieu prices and without ethane recoveries should allow us to continue to realize better overall NGL margins.
Given the recent market dynamics and the slight decoupling between oil and NGL prices along with the reclassification of the Mariner East II costs noted previously, we have lowered our NGL guidance as a percent of WTI for the full year. However, we believe Montage remains advantage from a cash margin perspective due to our ability to reject a significant portion of our ethane, our access to Mariner East II pricing and the diversity of our NGL sales program.
Our realized oil price for the first quarter of $48.09 per barrel implies a negative $6.73 differential to WTI, which is inclusive of all transportation expenses. As our activity continues in the Utica condensate portion of our acreage, which provides us with pure leading margins and significantly differentiates us from other Appalachian peers.
We believe we are uniquely positioned among our peers to benefit from the recent strength in WTI prices. For the first quarter, our $103.9 million of capital expenditures consisted predominantly of $99 million in drilling and completion capital and about $5 million in land capital. The capital spending for the quarter reflects our focus on controlling costs and assuring our dollars are spent where they will return value to the business as quickly and as efficiently as possible.
As evidenced by the 95% allocation of capital in this quarter to the drill bit. The trajectory of these drilling and completion capital cost as it relates to our full year 2019 capital budget will be weighted slightly to the front half of the year as we expect approximately 55% to 65% of the capital expenditures for the year to occur during the first two quarters of 2019.
Turning to the balance sheet. Our strong operating performance and EBITDAX allowed us to end the first quarter of 2019 at a debt to pro forma LTM EBITDAX of 1.6 times and with almost $297 million of liquidity after the newly announced borrowing base increase of 7% to $400 million more than sufficient to fund our development plan for the foreseeable future.
During the quarter we took advantage of the strengthened oil prices to add to both our 2019 and 2020 hedge position while continuing to act opportunistically to our natural gas hedges, which currently stand at approximately 66% in 2019 projected production.
Keep in mind that approximately 35% to 40% of our 2019 revenues are expected to come from liquids production, and as we expect to continue to increase our leverage to NGLs and condensate in the future, we will remain opportunistic with our hedging strategy to take advantage of pricing momentum similar to what we have seen recently with crude oil prices.
As we consider our current liquidity position and our capital plan, we are comfortable that Montage remains well positioned to fund its drilling program with cash flow from operations and our revolver while generating an attractive level of production and cash flow growth. This revolver will provide the base funding for the company's combined 2019 growth and as we continue to target becoming cash flow neutral by the end of the year.
We expect to end 2019 with the leverage ratio of approximately two times and be well positioned with many financial options as we look to 2020 and beyond.
On that note, John will wrap up the prepared remarks.
John Reinhart -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Thank you, Michael. As we continue the process of integration, we will continue to expect to see the effects of increased scale playing out in real time. There are a number of synergies from the combined company and asset base that we believe can be further realized and we remain extremely flexible from an operational, financial and commitment perspective.
Overall I remain thoroughly impressed with this team and their push to enhance the value of our asset base and our company. Our strong first quarter performance demonstrates our focus on enhancing operations and positions Montage for increase efficiency, cash flow neutrality, and shareholder value creation. We are proud of the progress we have made and we are only just getting started.
We thank everyone for joining us on the call today. This concludes our prepared remarks. Operator, please open the line for questions.
Questions and Answers:
Operator
Thank you. (Operator Instructions) (Technical Difficulty) caller Jane Trotsenko. Please go ahead with your question.
Jane Trotsenko -- Stifel -- Analyst
Good morning. My first question is on natural gas price realization. So, they have been very impressive in 1Q'19. I'm curious if you guys can provide some color on the released pipeline capacity and this availability and how you guys can take advantage of it. And if you, you know, looking for the, if you can still continue taking advantage of this released capacity and if that can offset the wider in-basin differentials that we have seen recently. Sorry, it's like too many questions in one, but basically trying to understand how in-basin differentials are going to look like.
Michael Hodges -- Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Yes, Jane. This is Michael, I think, it's a great question. I appreciate you're asking. So, I think, as you look out into the last part of the year you've seen a little bit of widening in the basis differentials for maybe where they started the year. I think you know our opportunity of course is to take advantage of the position that we put ourselves in with the flexibility that we have.
So, we've continued to see, other guys coming to us looking for molecules to fill the capacity that they've taken on, and so we've had good success both in the quarter we just reported, but also as we've started out here into the second quarter with the ability to continue to optimize our gas.
So, I think, you know kind of long term our view of the pipeline situation in the Northeast continues to be, but it will remain a little bit oversupplied. We think that we'll continue to have the opportunity to optimize the gas, and so we're hopeful that as we go out into the second half of the year, we'll continue to see the realizations that we put forth to be kind of at the low end of what we're guiding toward. We don't forecast the success on that optimization process.
But the company certainly had good success with that over the past, call it, 12 or 18 months. So, we feel pretty good about where we can go going forward.
Jane Trotsenko -- Stifel -- Analyst
That's really helpful. My second question is on the reclassification of the Mariner East II transportation expense. Could you explain why exactly you had to change the way you account for the transportation expense and if that applies only to Mariner East II costs and not to other NGL transportation charges?
Michael Hodges -- Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Yes, that's a good question as well. I think you know each of these contracts of course is a little bit different, the contract that we have that allows us to move volumes on Mariner East II had some subtleties to it.
It's also actually changed a couple of times over the years, and so this is the first quarter that we've actually slowed volumes on Mariner East II, the price that we receive is actually a net price, and the way that the title transfer occurs and some of the other subtleties that are in that contract.
The accounting dictates that we should record that as a reduction to our revenue, certainly impacts the bottom line is the same whether it's the cash operating cost or revenue deduction. And so you know as we dug in and finalize that with our accounting shop, we came to the conclusion that the right way to do it was to net it against the NGL revenue.
And again that's on a case by case basis, it doesn't change anything we've done in the past, and it certainly doesn't mean that the contracts we look at in the future necessarily will have to be treated the same way. But that's what we came out on this one.
Jane Trotsenko -- Stifel -- Analyst
Okay. Got it. And my final question is around water cost savings, if you guys can provide some color around water infrastructure and the recycling of producing water and how it helps to lower the well costs?
Mathew Rucker -- Executive Vice President, Planning and Development
Jane, I can take this. So, we do have significant savings on the water side. Basically whenever we have active frac crews operating which pretty much is almost all the time all the producing flow back water is taken and recycled as part of the what frac fluids.
And so we actually have a very minimal saltwater disposal costs and we're continuing down the same path. We also have a very synergistic infrastructure between legacy Eclipse and legacy Blue Ridge Mountain Resources. And so you know we're able to leverage this water infrastructure through very efficient supply system for our fracs.
Jane Trotsenko -- Stifel -- Analyst
Got it. Thanks a lot. Thanks for taking my questions.
Mathew Rucker -- Executive Vice President, Planning and Development
Thank you.
Michael Hodges -- Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Thanks, Jane.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question will be coming from the line of Jeffrey Campbell with Tuohy Brothers. Please proceed with your question, sir.
Jeffrey Campbell -- Tuohy Brothers -- Analyst
Good morning, and congratulations on the strong quarter. I wanted to ask about your nat gas margins. Just wondering is the local Appalachian market still providing you best margins and which are the markets are you prioritizing for volumes in 2019.
Michael Hodges -- Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Yes, Jeff, this is Michael, I'll take that one. I think you know even with a little bit of the widening in the basis differentials, if you think about the fact that we can get into the little, no cost, those are actually still the best net back in our portfolio. You know, we've got a variety of different options where we move our gas.
I think that's something we talked about in our Analyst Day at quite some length, but we liked the diversity that we had and we certainly think that there's other markets that over time become more favorable or widen out a little bit. But I think as we sit here today and at least for the foreseeable future, we feel really good about the in-basin pricing dynamic combined with the optimization that I talked about a little bit earlier.
So, I think, from our perspective as we look out into the future and I'm not sure if this is where you're necessarily going, but I think we're pretty comfortable with the firm transportation portfolio that we have and allowing the incremental production at least for the time being to flow into those local markets and realize some of the best net backs in our portfolio.
Jeffrey Campbell -- Tuohy Brothers -- Analyst
That was what I was interested in. It look like that the first quarter '19 liquids cut was higher than the full year '19 guidance, if I got that right, I was just wondering was this due to well performance or just or more wet wells completions front end loaded for 2019?
Mathew Rucker -- Executive Vice President, Planning and Development
Yes, this is Matt. So, really that was around well performance, the cadence on well count in the quarter and wet versus dry really didn't change for us. We had certainly the woodchopper pad that came online that was more liquids heavy as well as just outperformance on the PDP as we were seeing some shallower based declines on both the condensate yields and even improved NGL yields across the board for our processing agreement.
So, really good outperformance by the wells, and we continue to ramp up our wet gas volumes over the second half of the year.
Jeffrey Campbell -- Tuohy Brothers -- Analyst
Okay. That's pretty positive. Last thing I want to ask is when we spoke in New York, Oleg, mentioned that he thought that about 20% of historical Marcellus completions might not be taking fluid and he described some in-house analysis tools to improve the results. And I was just wondering if field testing of this potential completion enhancement has begun yet.
Mathew Rucker -- Executive Vice President, Planning and Development
So, it has begun. So, we are using those synthetic MSE (ph) logs for engineered completions or engineered perforations. We began using them in all of our Marcellus pads and the Utica pad. So, all of the pads and progress that we'll be going to sales end of Q2 will be based on engineering firm designs and that technologies we've developed.
Jeffrey Campbell -- Tuohy Brothers -- Analyst
Okay, great. That seems like a little bit more comprehensive use than faster than I thought it would be. You must be seeing some positive results than ever?
Mathew Rucker -- Executive Vice President, Planning and Development
Yes, I mean, really the results that we will see from these wells, it will probably take eight to nine months to fully sink-in, but we are very upbeat about the first two Marcellus wells that we have put to sales in January of last year that are really driving the confidence behind our Marcellus type curve and development program. So you know we are really hopeful that this technology continues to play out for us in the future.
Jeffrey Campbell -- Tuohy Brothers -- Analyst
Okay. We'll continue to watch the results of that. Thanks for taking my questions.
Mathew Rucker -- Executive Vice President, Planning and Development
Thank you.
Operator
The next question is coming from the line of Ron Mills with Johnson Rice. Please proceed with your questions.
Ronald Mills -- Johnson Rice & Company -- Analyst
Hey, good morning. Just a question maybe a follow up on that last one in terms of the shift to liquids. Any appreciable shift versus your Analyst Day in terms of whether it's over the remainder of the year. Preliminary thoughts of 2020 of kind of your split of liquids drilling especially given the early woodchopper success and kind of seemingly adding almost 50% to your condensate inventory in that area?
John Reinhart -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Good morning, Ron. This is John. I'll answer that and then Matt can chime in, if he has anything else to add. With regards to any 2019 allocations toward liquids, generally speaking, there's been a slight shift to a little bit more liquids as we've taken some dry gas and shifted the schedule around.
But generally speaking by and large it's about the same allocation on a year basis. I think what we're seeing is some acceleration of some of these condensate wells and certainly you're going to see in the second half of the year about 80% of the wells that we turn-in-line are going to be liquids.
So, if you kind of look at 2Q guidance versus full year, you'll see that gas percentage goes down quite significantly as we bring on all these oil wells in the second half of the year. So, no real change of significance from the allocation perspective you know greater than 50% kind of toward liquids this year from the Analyst Day. What I'll do is make a comment on 2020.
We're very focused right now on iterations throughout the second half of the year and into 2020. While we're not prepared to come out publicly with what that might look like what I can't tell you is just looking at the forward strips and looking at the economics we certainly favor increased liquids exposure.
We are very fortunate as a company to have half of our inventory in the liquids window, so we're going to be placing more emphasis on allocation toward that higher revenue generating type well mix as we go into 2020, and toward the end of the year we'll certainly share more of the specifics on what that allocation might look like.
Ronald Mills -- Johnson Rice & Company -- Analyst
Okay, great. And you mentioned both at the Analyst Day and again today on Flat Castle. Can you just find a little bit maybe more clarity in terms of what kind of discussions you're having in terms of presumably it's to potentially pull value forward on Flat Castle given that more of your focus is going to be more down in your Utica properties more in Ohio. Is that a fair representation?
John Reinhart -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Yes, Ron. This is John, I'll answer that one. I think that you can -- it is a fair representation, but what I'll caveat that is, we've seen the well performance of this Painter 2 continue to progressively exceed our expectations. It's now the returns are developing out there where it's starting to get into the capital allocation type exposure mix. So, when we think about dry gas and liquids you know we're certainly leaning toward liquids these days.
But as far as dry gas goes you know it's becoming -- to become competitive with the Monroe County acreage. So if you think about the discussions we're having with these counter-parties you're absolutely right it's about accelerating value, accelerating development or you know or other ways or other monetization options that jointly through discussions there could be -- where there could be a win-win
So, it kind of runs the gamut of you know full circuit kind of divestiture, but quite frankly you know we feel like in today's market we might not get the realized value of it. So, we're leaning more toward the discussions about partnering up with somebody that would offset our capital, but start proving up and putting reserves on the books for this highly accretive and quite frankly highly economic area up in Flat Castle. So, hopefully that answers your question on what we're looking for.
Ronald Mills -- Johnson Rice & Company -- Analyst
It does and then last on CapEx, when you talk about kind of 55% or 60% of your capital in the first half of the year, that implies obviously, a relative slowdown in the second. It sounds like you spend a lot of time thinking about 2020. Is that spending levels still going to be at the level where you end up entering 2020 given completion cadence on a you know with kind of a full head of operational steam and are you still expecting kind of free cash flow by year end to continue through next year? Thank you.
John Reinhart -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Yes, Ron. This is John again, I'll take that. I think you're spot on with the sensitivities that we look at with regards to activity level and cadence. What we want to do is make sure that we are performing and executing throughout the end of the third quarter into the fourth quarter to continue our production growth. We are certainly going to have a growth in 2020 it's going to be a disciplined growth as we talked about. And if you kind of take the cadence that we've talked about being at or below our capital budget, but actually exceeding on a production basis for full year and exceeding on our production costs. We feel like this puts us in a great position from a cash flow generation perspective in the second half of the year especially in the fourth quarter and moving into 2020.
Ronald Mills -- Johnson Rice & Company -- Analyst
Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. (Operator Instruction) The next question is from the line of Stark Remeny with RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question. Mr. Remeny your line is open for questions.
Stark Remeny -- RBC Capital Markets -- Analyst
My apologize guys. I think, I was on mute, but congrats on a solid quarter, and thanks for taking my questions. As a follow up to the prior caller. I was just hoping you could maybe give a little more detail around completion cadence for the rest of the year. It seems like based on the guidance it's obviously very, growth is very second half weighted. So, should we be thinking about most of your turn-in-lines flowing through to the back half or what's your expectation around that?
John Reinhart -- President and Chief Executive Officer
It's a great question. This is John. If you think about the cadence I would view, you know, the full year in that -- on a gross basis at 33 to 36 number as far as turned to sales. And if you think about we're more kind of end of Q2 beginning of Q3 timed on these things. So, if you think about that 2Q and Q3, we're really looking at you know approximately 25 of those.
So, it's a substantial amount of that range. It's going to be in that Q2, Q3 time period and the fourth quarter kind of tails in just because when you run a two-break cycle you have just the ebbs and flows of when pads, frac and then the turn-in-line.
So, the cadence would certainly be Q2 heavy on frac and quite frankly Q3 starts to tail down and turn-in-lines really ramp up in Q2 and Q3 associated with that activity level. If that answer your question. So, it's kind of the middle of the year is when you can expect that turn-in-line bulk of costs and then that's why you're seeing the completions more front loaded into Q2.
Stark Remeny -- RBC Capital Markets -- Analyst
That's perfect. And then just one follow-up on A&D activity. I appreciate all the color on Flat Castle developments, but I think you guys had kind of mentioned the plans for a possible non-core assets sales and it looks like there may be some discontinued ops on the income statement. I guess any color on that and then thoughts on outlook for sales for the rest of the year?
John Reinhart -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Yes, I mean, this is John. I'll speak high level as we're in a very fortunate position to have 27 years of inventory of really high quality assets. And as we kind of look at the company as a management team we're very focused on you know accelerating values for the benefit of the company and the shareholders.
So, although, we didn't really specify any kind of discussions that are going on from a asset sale divestiture kind of standpoint. What I'll tell you is, it shouldn't be a surprise to everybody that the market is a little bit tough with regards to undeveloped acreage these days, but we are very focused on identifying opportunities whereby we had acreage that won't be developed in the next five to six years that might be brought forward by somebody else's capital plan.
So, we stay open to those as we get in-balance, we assess them, and we will do and take actions that are accretive to the company especially if it enhances value for carried inventory that we receive little or no value for. So, as those things progressed, and we get something material to share we'll be sure to share that with the market on future calls.
Stark Remeny -- RBC Capital Markets -- Analyst
Perfect. Thank you, guys.
John Reinhart -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Thank you.
Operator
The next question is coming from the line of Holly Stewart with Scotia Howard Weil. Please proceed with your question.
Holly Stewart -- Scotia Howard Weil -- Analyst
Good morning, gentlemen. Just maybe two quick ones. First, you noted in the release that you're on track to push well cost below that kind of 870 per foot target. Can you give us a sense of where things are today?
John Reinhart -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Yes, this is John. I thin it's pretty early with regards to kind of pegging a number on what that might look like for the end of the year. But as we look at our execution throughout the first quarter and quite frankly the quarter today, what we're seeing are substantial efficiencies on the completion side, the drilling side efficiencies have come down.
So as far as well costs, the drillers are actually at or below on recent capital spend per well, and the completion crews have been down about 10% to 15% versus Q4 costs year-to-date. So whenever you couple those two things together we feel like on a per well basis that 870 weighted average per foot of lateral capital cost.
We feel very positive about hitting that and we certainly feel very positive there's some room to even take that substantially lower (Technical Difficulty) be able to provide a little bit more color on where that's looking like it's going to land in next quarter as we get you know approximately half of our operations under our belt for the full year, but we feel very positive about the current trends that we're seeing.
Holly Stewart -- Scotia Howard Weil -- Analyst
That's great. And then maybe just one more, I've noted in my Analyst Day notes that you talked about a deep well deep Utica well in Tyler County, just have any that you drilled last year? Any update on that well to provide?
Mathew Rucker -- Executive Vice President, Planning and Development
Yes, Holly, this is Matt. I'll take that. The well continues to produce above our expectations. Actually it has hit the flat period plateau decline at this point which was about a month past our expectations. Still tracking along our type curve that we assess to the Monroe County on a 2.2 Bcf per 1,000 foot basis and we continue to monitor that as we have more data on the decline now.
So, we're still very impressed by the well results there and the team continues to look at future development opportunities that might exist in West Virginia.
Holly Stewart -- Scotia Howard Weil -- Analyst
Do you have the AFE on that well?
Mathew Rucker -- Executive Vice President, Planning and Development
Yes. No, I don't have that in front of me for now. But our type curve expectations would be very in line with the Monroe on a development plan basis of about that 950 per foot.
Holly Stewart -- Scotia Howard Weil -- Analyst
Okay. That's great. Thanks, guys.
Mathew Rucker -- Executive Vice President, Planning and Development
Thanks, Holly.
Operator
Thank you. We've reached the end of the question-and-answer session. I will now turn the call over to John Reinhart after his closing remarks.
John Reinhart -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Well, thanks, everybody for joining us for the call this morning. We've had a great quarter and we appreciate your attention and questions and certainly look forward to visiting with you about the continued success of the company in second quarter. Have a great day.
Operator
Thank you. This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.
Duration: 42 minutes
Call participants:
Douglas Kris -- Vice President, Investor Relations.
John Reinhart -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Michael Hodges -- Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Mathew Rucker -- Executive Vice President, Planning and Development
Jane Trotsenko -- Stifel -- Analyst
Jeffrey Campbell -- Tuohy Brothers -- Analyst
Ronald Mills -- Johnson Rice & Company -- Analyst
Stark Remeny -- RBC Capital Markets -- Analyst
Holly Stewart -- Scotia Howard Weil -- Analyst
