Introducing Antero Resources: A Profitable Natural Gas Producer

In this series, we’ll take a look at Antero Resources’ (AR) performance this year. We’ll also look at some of its key operational and financial highlights. A separate series focusing on Antero’s key fundamentals will follow soon.

Antero Resources is an independent E&P (exploration and production) company headquartered in Denver, Colorado. AR primarily operates in the Appalachia Basin, engaging in exploitation and development as well as acquisition of natural gas, natural gas liquids and crude oil properties.

AR holds over 484,000 net acres in the core of the Marcellus Shale and over 145,000 net acres in the core of the Utica Shale. Other upstream companies that are also active in the Marcellus Shale are Cabot Oil & Gas (COG) and EQT (EQT). Key operators in the Utica Shale include Chesapeake Energy (CHK) and Rice Energy (RICE). These companies combined make up 6.3% of the iShares US Oil & Gas Exploration & Production ETF (IEO).

As of December 31, 2015, Antero’s proved reserves were 13.2 Tcfe (trillion cubic feet equivalent). The company’s Marcellus region accounted for approximately 86% of its estimated proved reserves as of December 31, 2015. Utica accounted for the remainder.

About 72% of Antero Resources’ proved reserves at the end of the year were natural gas, which means Antero is more levered to natural gas prices (UNG).

Antero Resources was founded in 2002. It launched an IPO (initial public offering) on October 10, 2013. On October 27, 2014, Antero Resources (AR) announced the initial public offering of Antero Midstream Partners LP (AM).

We’ll talk more about AR’s organizational structure and its midstream subsidiary in the next part of this series.