Imperial Oil Limited

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Imperial Q3 2021 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in the listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star 0. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Dave Hughes, Vice President of Investor Relations. Sir, please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, everybody. Thanks for joining us on our third quarter earnings call. I'm joined today by Brad Corson, Chairman, President, and CEO, and the rest of the management team, including Dan Lyons, Senior Vice President of Finance and Administration, Simon Younger, Senior Vice President of the Upstream, Sherry Evers, Vice President of Commercial and Corporate Development, and John Wetmore, Vice President of the Downstream. I'm going to start by reading the cautionary statement. Today's comments include reference to non-GAAP financial measures. The definitions and reconciliations of these measures can be found in attachment six of our most recent press release and available on our website with the link to this conference call. Today's comments may also contain forward-looking information. Any forward-looking information is not a guarantee of future performance. An actual future financial performance and operating results can differ materially depending on a number of factors and assumptions. Forward-looking information and the risk factors and assumptions are described in further detail in our third quarter earnings press release that we issued this morning, as well as our most recent Form 10-K. And all of these documents are available on CR, EDGAR, and on our website. So I'd ask you to please refer to those. Usual format today, Brad will start with some opening remarks, and then Dan will go over the financial performance, then back to Brad to talk through our operating performance for the quarter. Then we'll follow it up with a Q&A session. So with that, I'll turn it over to Brad.

Thanks Dave. Well good morning everyone and welcome to our third quarter 2021 earnings call. I hope each of you are doing well and had the chance to enjoy some time with friends and family over the summer. What a difference a year makes. The third quarter is now in the books and I'm very much looking forward to taking you through our results today. It was a great quarter by any measure as our strong operational performance continued to allow us to make the most of this very attractive business environment. Our assets performance met or exceeded our expectations. And once again, we have a few records to talk about. And I would note that this was across all of our business lines. Along with very strong operational performance, we continue to benefit from actions we took last year to reduce our overall cost structure and improve reliability. And this combination is so advantageous when commodity prices are continuing to see strength. This is what allows us to capture maximum value today, but also ensures our resiliency in a downturn should that occur in the future. In this quarter, the momentum you have heard me talk about was fully on display. We had very little planned maintenance, and on top of that, high reliability, which allowed us to take maximum advantage of the improving business environment. Over the next few minutes, Dan and I will detail the results of what was, again, a very strong quarter. So now let's turn more specifically to the third quarter results. Earnings for the quarter were $908 million, and our cash from operating activities was over $1.9 billion, both up significantly from the second quarter. Crude prices continued to strengthen through the quarter, and downstream and chemical margins remained robust. Our upstream continues to perform very well, and I'll talk more about each asset in just a few minutes, but would point out that we delivered our highest third quarter upstream production in over 30 years, driven by the second best quarter ever at Curl. And our downstream performed extremely well also. We saw utilization of 94%, and higher product sales as demand continued to recover. We also announced our intention to pursue a renewable diesel project, which at the time of commissioning is projected to be the largest in Canada. This will deliver incremental shareholder value in addition to helping Imperial and Canada with the energy transition and overall reduction in emissions. And I can't say enough about our chemicals results. Wow. Not only did we set a quarterly earnings record, but our year-to-date earnings are already greater than the best-ever full-year earnings for the last 30 years. Obviously, we have one quarter to go for the year, so it's not a direct comparison. It says nothing about the fourth quarter, but gives you a flavor for just how strong our performance has been year-to-date. So in total, Our strong cash flow generation in a period of very strong commodity prices is underpinned by excellent operational performance. We were able to get the most out of very attractive markets for crude, refined products, and chemicals. And once again, our strong cash position has enabled us to continue to deliver on our promise of shareholder returns. In the quarter, we returned over $500 million to our shareholders in the form of dividends and share buybacks. And so far in 2021, we have returned in excess of $2 billion to our shareholders. The last time our shareholder returns were this high three quarters into the year was 2008. And of course, there's more to come. All of this together adds up to a very strong year so far. a year which is being recognized by the market. As of yesterday's close, our share price had risen over 85% since the start of the year, and up 50% since pre-pandemic levels at the beginning of March 2020. So with that, I will now turn it over to Dan to go through our financial performance for the quarter in more detail.