Meet Mathis Fender of Airedale Royalty in Knox and Henderson

Today we’d like to introduce you to Mathis Fender.

Mathis, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
Airedale Royalty is a family business that was founded and is run by David (my dad) and Mathis Fender (me). David was an oil & gas operator for 38 years in Tyler, TX and retired from that in 2007. Harris R. Fender, David’s father, operated oil & gas wells in east Texas and began buying minerals at some point prior to March of 1944. So oil & gas has been a Fender family trade for over 73 years. After I graduated from college, as soon as I could, I started buying small producing and non-producing mineral and royalty interests for my own account in 2006. In late 2014 oil prices began to collapse quickly and by mid-2015, an unprecedented buying opportunity for mineral and royalty buyers presented itself. I decided to jump at the opportunity to leave Los Angeles real estate and pursue an oil dream full time in Dallas.

Everyone always asks us where the name “Airedale” comes from. When David was a young boy, he had a couple of Airedale Terriers that made big impressions on him, one named Hickory and one named Cindy. My dad remembers Hickory as he and his brother’s protector. Hickory was a beloved member of the family for years. My dad’s family took a road-trip vacation from Texas to New York and Hickory stayed with an uncle. Apparently, the spurious story goes, that the uncle said that Hickory got into a neighbor’s trash and was poisoned and died while they were out of town. It crushed my dad at the time, and to this day he doesn’t believe that story to be accurate. He had a very special connection with Hickory and really loved that dog. Not too long after Hickory passed, along came Cindy. Cindy was another wonderful Airedale that would wait to greet my dad and my uncle when they returned home each day from school and run circles around them with joy. As Cindy got older and bigger, she and the other (much smaller and older Fox Terrier) family dog started to have problems with each other and that escalated into somewhat of a violent power struggle between the two dogs. Unfortunately, that led to Cindy being re-homed without much warning to my dad. As a young child, I can remember no less than 2 dogs living in our house at all times until I left for college. We have always been dog and animal lovers. However, after Cindy, my dad has still never had the chance to have another Airedale. Airedale’s have a very strong prey drive and often don’t do well in the house with smaller animals. When my dad agreed to partner 50/50 with me buying and brokering mineral and royalty deals, I decided to name our venture Airedale Royalty as my way of giving him that elusive Airedale that he has always wanted ever since Cindy. My dad has taught me everything I know about the oil business, and I wanted this company’s name to be a nod in his direction.

Airedale Royalty officially got started with a very modest investment of our own money in January of 2016, and was able to become profitable within our first year of being in business. An incredible amount of time, effort, and research goes into each acquisition that Airedale makes. We take geology, historical production, and surrounding activity into account and we take each prospect we look at very seriously. With the time and effort that we expend on our evaluation process, Airedale will always keep a large percentage of every property it purchases. We feel very good about having transacted in year 1 for more than 2,100 net acres of minerals, 100% of which, were leased by EOG Resources. Heading toward the 2 year mark, Airedale is targeting a well-known high-reward 4 county area with expectations to more than double our success of year one.

Our partnership has been very fruitful, and more than anything, a lot of fun up to this point. My dad and I bring different yet complimentary skillsets to the table and the combination has really worked well for us. Airedale strives to continue building our reputation for being thorough with our due diligence investigating available oil & gas properties, buying both small and large mineral/royalty interests, and delivering significant value to our clients within a very short timeframe.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Starting a new business (at least in my experience) is rarely, if ever, a smooth road. We have faced many great challenges along the way and timing is everything in our business. I had envisioned our first deal being a very small manageable investment to get us started and building a foundation on several small successful deals.

In 2014, my father was given a presentation on a very large property that was extremely exciting. At the time, he wished he could own some of the minerals under it. Fast forward to February of 2016, a large portion of the minerals under that same property were presented to us for sale and that small first deal idea went right out the window. It wasn’t a question of if we were going to buy it, it was a matter of how we were going to buy it. To make a very long, stressful, exciting story short, we may have bitten off more than we could chew right off the bat. At times we felt overwhelmed struggling to get the timing and all of the moving parts of a complicated deal to align. I’m proud to say, that we learned a lot getting that deal successfully closed. We met so many great partners/clients, and found our footing in the business over the course of that first major struggle.

Each new deal we do, presents a new set of challenges to us. We often work with clients that need to adhere to strict time constraints for the purchase or sale of a property. This is often due to the utilization of a 1031 exchange, a tax code allowance for people to sell one property and put the profits into a like-kind property tax free within a certain timeframe. About 75% of the properties we see, are deals where the property being sold has liens or title issues that need to be cleared up. It is our standard operating procedure to remove any title problem when buying property to ensure that we get clear title for ourselves and to be able to deliver good title to anyone buying property from us going forward. These and a myriad of other challenges we face can be tricky to navigate, but they keep us on our toes.

Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about Airedale Royalty – what should we know?
Airedale Royalty researches, evaluates, and purchases properties in highly prospective oil & gas areas primarily located in Texas, but also in other areas of the country. We buy in well-established geologic basins as well as developing plays. Airedale often offers portions of these properties for sale to our partners or qualified oil industry investors. We specialize in buying properties with great upside and the potential to grow in value related to oil & gas production. Airedale only buys properties that meet a stringent set of criteria. We always buy with the intention of keeping the majority of the property.

I am most proud of the fact that, despite the overwhelming odds of failure for new small business ventures, my father and I have managed to get Airedale Royalty off the ground and thriving in its first year of existence with very little startup capital.

One of the main things that sets us apart from most other mineral buying companies, is that we use our own money to buy oil properties. As an old oil & gas man would say, “You not only have to believe it in your heart, you also have to believe it in your pocket book.” Our partners know they can trust that anything they buy from Airedale, is a property that we highly value and truly believe is worth owning.

Any shoutouts? Who else deserves credit in this story – who has played a meaningful role?
Business is definitely a team sport, we have so many great people that we work with on a regular basis that support our efforts. I would first and foremost like to mention, Jane Fender (my mother) and Abby Fender (my sister) as our biggest supporters. They root for us unconditionally.

All of the names I am about to mention, are those who have stuck by us from the beginning and that we consider to be part of the Airedale Royalty family. Terry Stembridge Sr. of S W Operating, Inc. and Terry Stembridge Jr. of TJR Energy, Inc. have been instrumental to our success and were both part of the team that brought us our first deal. We have a great working relationship with Jack Steinhouser of Hunter Stuart Energy Advisors, Inc. out of Parker, Colorado who has been an extremely dedicated partner bringing us together with likeminded oil & gas investors outside of our local network. Lynn Elliott of Lometa Petroleum Corporation has been an invaluable ally in the field for Airedale from the beginning. Someone who has certainly been a mentor to me, has always been an Airedale supporter and a close family friend, is Sam Myers. We think the world of these people and feel truly blessed to be able to call them colleagues and friends.

Contact Info:

• Address: 4926 Mission Avenue Suite 2410
  Dallas, Tx 75206
  1021 ESE Loop 323 Suite 110
  Tyler, Tx 75701
• Website: www.AiredaleRoyalty.com
• Phone: (903) 533-9111
• Email: Mathis@AiredaleRoyalty.com David@AiredaleRoyalty.com
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/airedaleroyalty

 
Image Credit:
Photo in white shirt – Robert Raphael

Getting in touch: VoyageDallas is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.