The folks who run Diamondback Energy apparently take the company’s name seriously.

Seizing opportunities to expand across the Permian Basin with rattlesnake aim – even as other E&Ps bowed to shareholder demands for little-to-no growth – Diamondback in the last decade or so has become a Permian pure play juggernaut.

And the company will integrate its latest target to swallow whole, a $26 billion deal for Endeavor Energy Resources, by applying a “small company dynamic culture with a large asset base” that is growing ever larger.

That culture is Diamondback’s biggest benefit, CEO Travis Stice said on May 1 during a first-quarter earnings call with analysts.

“We are going to have to make sure we maintain that gritty, quick, fast-moving adaptive culture to a larger asset base,” he said. “There's a lot of capital being put in the ground before ‘first oil’ – sometimes upward of $250 [million], $300 million – but as long as you have the ability to move crews and rigs within a quarter, within a year, and keep hitting numbers, we're going to keep doing that at a larger scale.”

A flat, un-siloed organizational structure has been present at Diamondback since its inception, Stice said.

“The only way that you can grow an organization and maintain that effectively is to have an unreasonable level of trust. And as we encourage the Endeavor employees to come over, we're going to be demonstrating this high level of trust,” he said. “It's going to be a very important part of our evolving culture as a much larger company.”

In February, Diamondback announced the $26 billion cash-and-stock agreement with Endeavor to create a combined company valued at more than $52 billion. The transaction consideration was to consist of approximately 117.3 million shares of Diamondback common stock and $8 billion of cash, subject to customary adjustments.

Stice was questioned about the 11th-hour action of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which issued a “second request” form regarding the Endeavor deal.

The agency made the notification on April 29, the final day it could do so statutorily, and extended its review period on the transaction.

“Our research indicates that most of the larger transactions have received that,” asked Derek Whitfield at Stifel. “Is that consistent with how you're thinking about it?”

Stice acknowledged the issue, but didn’t elaborate.

“Yeah, that's consistent,” Stice said.

Dealmakers involved in the largest transactions announced during a historic E&P consolidation trend, which revved up last fall, have received the same FTC notice.

 In April, Chesapeake Energy’s $7.4 billion merger with Southwestern Energy was delayed by such a request. The agency has also filed second request notifications with Chevron and Hess Corp. related to a $53 billion merger, as well as Exxon Mobil and Pioneer Natural Resources regarding their $60 billion deal.

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