Evolution Petroleum Corporation, Inc.

Good morning and welcome to the Evolution Petroleum second quarter fiscal year 2024 earnings release conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Brandi Hudson, Investor Relations Manager. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Welcome to Evolution Petroleum's fiscal Q2 2024 earnings call. I'm joined by Kelly Lloyd, President and Chief Executive Officer, Mark Bunch, Chief Operating Officer, and Ryan Stash, Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, and Treasurer. We released our fiscal 2024 second quarter financial results after the market closed yesterday. Please refer to our earnings press release for additional information concerning these results. You can access our earnings release in the Investors section of our website. Please note that any statements and information provided in today's call speak only as of today's date, February 7, 2024, and any time-sensitive information may not be accurate at a later date. Our discussion today will contain forward-looking statements of management's beliefs and assumptions based on currently available information. These forward-looking statements are subject to the risks, assumptions, and uncertainties as described in our SEC filings. Actual results may differ materially from those expected. We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statement. During today's call, we may discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures, including adjusted EBITDA and adjusted net income. Reconciliations of these measures to the closest comparable GAAP measures can be found in our earnings release. Kelly will begin today's call with some opening comments. Mark will provide an update on our properties and plans as they relate to our ongoing strategy of maximizing shareholder returns. And Ryan will provide a brief review of our fiscal quarter highlights. After our prepared remarks, the management team will be available to answer any questions. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. If you wish to listen to a webcast replay of today's call, it will be available on the investor section of our website. With that, I will turn the call over to Kelly.

Thanks, Brandi. Over the past few years, our industry has evolved, and fittingly, so has evolution. The need for increased scale and economic efficiency has become more and more obvious. With the breakdown of the price correlation among commodities and the outsized effect of regionalized pricing, having exposure to multiple commodities in multiple markets has proven superior to the pure play, single basin, single commodity strategy of the past. Similarly, the shortening and the heightening of the commodity price cycle has increased the urgency of adding investment flexibility to portfolios. Being able to nimbly make accretive acquisitions and having an organic growth component to protect and enhance our dividend and share valuation while commodity price volatility remains elevated has become crucial. From October of 2019 through February of 2024, with the expected close of our latest three acquisitions, collectively we call this the scoop stack, Evolution will have participated in six major transactions, putting over $119 million to work for our shareholders. During that time, we've paid down over $41 million of borrowings, while our share count has remained virtually unchanged. Since we began paying dividends 10 years ago, we have returned over $3.33 per share to shareholders in cash and another $0.24 per share in share repurchases. These six major transactions have added oil, natural gas, and NGLs, all of which gain us exposure into different, largely uncorrelated markets, both by product and locations, many of which recently have experienced outsized favorable pricing versus other sales points. These six major transactions also provide evolution with hundreds of undrilled upside locations. We can either choose to participate in or sell many of these undeveloped locations, depending on which will bring the most value to our shareholders at the time. As an example, we have already drilled three producing wells in the Shavaroo field and two in our Delhi field. So, while our methods to execute our strategy have evolved and will continue to be enhanced, our goal remains the same as it has been since 2013, the year we paid our first of 41 and counting consecutive dividends. That goal is to maximize total shareholder returns by carefully evaluating every dollar we use to drive dividend payments, share repurchases, and replenishing and or growing our cash flow producing asset base, all while avoiding significant deletion or over leveraging our balance sheet. I'll hand it over to Mark now, who will give you an update from an operational standpoint on some of our recent actions supporting our strategy.