Evolution Petroleum Corporation, Inc.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Evolution Petroleum third quarter fiscal year 2024 earnings release conference call. All participants are in a 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 and then one on your touch-tone telephones. To withdraw your questions, you may press star and two. Please also note today's event is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the floor over to Brandi Hudson, Investor Relations Manager. Brandi, please go ahead.

Thank you. Welcome to Evolution Petroleum's fiscal Q3 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 third quarter financial results after the market closed yesterday. Please refer to our earnings press release for additional information containing 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, May 8, 2024, and anytime 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 overview 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 Brandy. During our last quarterly call, we told you that we were working to increase our scale and economic efficiency. We told you that expanding regionally and further diversifying our production base are important goals for us. Most importantly, we also told you that the point of all this is to increase our cash flow and therefore either extend our dividend fairway, allow us to increase our dividend, or do both. With our current asset base and the additions of our recent Scoop stack acquisitions and participation in the operations at Shavaroo, we've come a long way towards achieving what we set out to accomplish. And we've done so while keeping our balance sheet in our comfort zone and adding no incremental dilution. In fact, we repurchased shares during the quarter. We added to our producing asset base and our portfolio of drilling locations. We entered into two prolific areas, the Permian Basin and the Anadarko Basin. We increased our oil production as a percent of sales. In fact, this quarter represented a record amount of oil production net to the company. And by the end of the quarter, we had participated in 35 newly drilled wells or wells in progress, 32 in the scoop stack and three in Chavarru, which represent some of the most economic returns the company has seen to date. Evolution today versus evolution a year ago looks very promising. Our oil production for the fiscal third quarter this year versus last year is up by approximately 19%. Our NGL production is the same, and our natural gas production is down by roughly 4%. These numbers only include about half of the quarter for the scoop stack acquisitions, as the transaction closed on 2-12, and less than two-thirds of the quarter for the new Chavarru wells, as all three wells were only finished being placed on production in early February and ramped up in production as frac fluid was recovered. Today we have a much deeper and higher quality inventory of drilling locations versus a year ago, with economics that are very compelling. We believe that with our current inventory of assets, we have the firepower to fund our dividend for many years to come with the potential for growth, particularly as natural gas prices recover as expected, and we certainly don't intend to rest now. we're always on the lookout for the next highly accretive transaction that will benefit our shareholders. From October of 2019 through February of 2024, Evolution has 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 $3.45 per share to shareholders in cash and another $0.26 per share in share repurchases. These six major transactions have added substantial volumes of approved oil, natural gas, and NGLs, all of which gain us exposure into different, largely uncorrelated markets, both by product and locations, many of which have recently experienced outsized favorable pricing versus other sales points. These six major transactions also provide evolution with hundreds of undrilled upside locations operated by proven and experienced teams. We can either choose to participate, non-consent, or even sell many of these undeveloped locations, depending on which will bring the most value to our shareholders at the time. Throughout the years and across many diverse transactions, our goal remains the same as it has been since 2013, the year we paid our first of 42 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 dilution 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.