PEDEVCO is no longer the tiny Denver-Julesburg leftover that used to print a few million of quarterly revenue. The late-October combination with Juniper Capital portfolio companies North Peak Oil and Gas and Century Oil and Gas turned the Houston explorer into a Rockies operator with more than three hundred thousand net acres and oil-weighted production across the Denver-Julesburg Basin, the Powder River Basin, and a smaller San Andres position in eastern New Mexico. Control passed from longtime majority holder Dr. Simon Kukes to Edward Geiser and the Juniper entities when Series A preferred converted in late February, and a one-for-twenty reverse split in mid-March reset the share count to about thirteen million. The second-quarter print is the first full look at whether that platform can hold cash earnings after the first-quarter flush from thirty-one Denver-Julesburg wells rolled off peak.
Volumes fell as those new Denver-Julesburg wells followed their decline curves, yet revenue still rose because realized crude jumped to about $94 a barrel. Adjusted cash earnings held near $19 million even after the company recast the measure to include realized hedge settlements. That recast cut the first-quarter comparison to about $18 million and makes the sequential story look like a plateau, not an acceleration. Operating income more than doubled from the prior quarter because depletion eased and crude carried the mix, but cash still leaked through $8 million of realized hedge losses. The hedge book is doing what a reserve-based lender wants. It is also capping the very price spike that made the quarter look strong on the top line.
Management still points to a full-year adjusted cash-earnings range of $60 million to $70 million. The first half has already booked about $37 million of that. The Citibank revolver came down by $13 million during the quarter, leaving about $73 million of net funded debt and a leverage ratio near one times. The open question is whether an expanded second-half program of more than twenty gross wells, newly unlocked Wyoming federal permits after Bureau of Land Management litigation settled, and a field optimization push can replace decline before Juniper's registered resale of roughly eleven million shares tests the float.