Diamondback Energy (FANG) earnings preview: what to watch in Q3 2026

Diamondback Energy (NASDAQ: FANG), one of the largest oil producers in the Permian Basin of West Texas, plans to report third-quarter 2026 results after the market closes on Monday, November 2, 2026, with a conference call at 8:00 a.m. CT on Tuesday, November 3. The company announced both dates in a September 30, 2026 press release (GlobeNewswire reprint, Finviz).

Every figure below comes from our Q2 2026 analysis of Diamondback, which was based on the company's 10-Q and its August 3 earnings release. We don't quote analyst forecasts here.

What last quarter showed

Q2 2026 was a quarter driven by price. Net income attributable to Diamondback was $1.88 billion ($6.65 per diluted share), up from $699 million ($2.38) a year earlier.

• Oil price: Diamondback realized $96.82 per barrel of oil, up 53% from $63.23.
• Volumes: total production passed 1 million barrels of oil equivalent per day (1,017,659 BOE/d, up 10.6%) for the first time. (A BOE converts gas into oil-sized units so all products can be added up.) Oil itself grew more slowly, up 5.9% to 525,176 barrels per day.
• Gas: natural gas revenue was negative (−$276 million), an average realized price of −$2.15 per thousand cubic feet. Pipelines out of the Permian were full, so gas at the local Waha hub at times sold below zero.
• Cash: free cash flow (the company's measure: operating cash flow before working-capital changes minus capital spending) was about $2.33 billion. Most of it went to paying down debt, which fell about $1.3 billion to $12.8 billion. Dividends and buybacks together came to $452 million.

The board also dropped its promise to return at least 50% of free cash flow to shareholders each quarter, and it doubled the buyback authorization to $16.0 billion.

What management guided for Q3

From the August 3 release, as our Q2 report quoted it:

• Q3 2026 oil production: 517–527 thousand barrels per day (MBO/d), and 995–1,015 MBOE/d of total production.
• Q3 capital spending: $950–1,050 million. Q2 was $996 million.
• Q3 cash taxes: $400–460 million.
• Full year 2026: production raised to 1,000+ MBOE/d (from 972+) and oil to 522+ MBO/d (from 520+), with cash capex unchanged at about $3.9 billion.
• Management said it did not then expect another non-cash impairment (a write-down of the book value of its wells) in Q3. The Q1 2026 write-down was $1.4 billion.

Three things to watch

1. Whether gas prices turned positive. The −$2.15/Mcf realized gas price was the biggest drag in Q2. Management expected the Waha problem to ease "later in 2026" as more contracted pipeline capacity came on. Diamondback also holds Waha basis swaps covering 650,000 MMBtu/d in Q3. These are contracts that pay out when the gap between the Waha price and the Henry Hub benchmark price widens. If gas revenue is still below zero, that tells you the pipeline relief hasn't arrived yet. After hedges, Q2's gas price was −$0.34/Mcf.

2. Oil volumes against the 517–527 MBO/d range. The midpoint of 522 MBO/d is roughly flat with Q2's 525,176. Any extra growth would therefore come mostly from gas and NGLs, which earn much less per barrel. In the first half, Diamondback completed 315 wells but drilled only 215. That means it was working through its backlog of wells that had been drilled but not yet finished, and that backlog will run out. The number of wells drilled versus turned to production in Q3 shows how long the flat-capex, higher-volume plan can last.

3. How the free cash flow gets split. With the 50% floor gone, the balance between buybacks and debt repayment is now decided quarter by quarter. Q2's split was $452 million to shareholders and about $1.3 billion to debt. The Q2 release said Diamondback had already bought back about $100 million of stock in Q3 by early August. Watch total Q3 buybacks, how far debt falls below $12.8 billion, and whether a variable dividend comes back on top of the $1.10 base dividend.

The bigger risk

Oil hedges are mostly puts (contracts that pay out only if prices fall below a set level) struck around $50–55 a barrel. They protect against a crash, but Diamondback keeps nearly all the upside from high oil prices, and nearly all the exposure if prices fall back from Q2's level. The realized oil price in Q3 will drive the quarter's earnings more than anything else in the report.