Range Resources Corporation (RRC) Cash Flow Statement

The persistent OCF/NI premium appears rooted in Appalachian shale economics: quarterly D&A of roughly $88M to $186M is a non-cash charge against reserves that must be replaced by ongoing drilling, so the gap signals real cash generation rather than accounting flattery. However, the conversion ratio narrowed to 1.20x in 2026Q2 when a $91.5M working capital build absorbed cash, suggesting the quality signal is robust on a trend basis but noisy quarter to quarter. Because reported net income also embeds non-cash derivative fair value swings, the OCF/NI spread should be read as the cleaner gauge of underlying performance, though it too is partly an accrual artifact.

FCF has stayed positive in nine of ten quarters, and cumulative FCF well exceeds cumulative net income over the period, which would suggest the business has been self-funding its capital program while returning cash. Yet the path is highly irregular — the latest 2026Q3 quarter produced $148.6M of FCF at a 17.6% margin, below that quarter's $175.3M of net income, indicating capex is once again outrunning depreciation and absorbing the pricing tailwind. Investors should note the margin dispersion (from -3.5% to 43.8%) implies the FCF trajectory is a commodity-cycle readout rather than evidence of a widening structural moat.

Capex intensity has generally run between 16% and 33% of revenue, a level consistent with a growth-phase shale operator refreshing and extending inventory rather than harvesting mature wells, which supports the thesis that laterals and Tier 1 locations are still being developed. The 2025Q4 figure of $581.5M, equal to 73.9% of revenue, is a sharp outlier against adjacent quarters and warrants verification before being treated as a sustained step-up in capital commitment. Notably, the 2025Q3 line shows capex as a positive $159.2M alongside an $564.4M FCF figure, a sign inconsistency in the supplied data that I would flag for confirmation rather than interpret as a genuine cash inflow.

Dividends have climbed steadily from about $19.3M per quarter in 2024 to $23.4M in 2026Q3, a disciplined and modest commitment, while buybacks have been episodic — totaling roughly $401M over the ten quarters but falling to zero in the latest period. That pattern suggests returns are being sized opportunistically against prevailing cash generation rather than through a fixed program, which preserves flexibility but offers limited downside protection if commodity prices normalize. With net acquisition activity near zero throughout, the capital allocation posture reads as internally funded growth plus variable shareholder returns, and the absence of disclosed debt repayment flows in this dataset means deleveraging cannot be confirmed from cash flow lines alone.