Berry Corporation (bry)

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Barrie Corporation's Q4 and full year 2023 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a 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 11 on your telephone. You will hear a message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw the question, press star 11 again. Please note that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to pass the call over to Todd Captive with Investor Relations.

Thank you, Carmen, and welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us for Barry's fourth quarter and full year 2023 earnings teleconference. Earlier today, Barry issued an earnings release highlighting full year 2023 and fourth quarter results. Speaking this morning will be Fernando Araujo, our Chief Executive Officer, and Mike Helm, our Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I would like to call your attention to the safe harbor language found in our earnings release that was issued this morning. The release and today's discussion contain certain projections and other forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ from those expressed or implied in these statements. These include risks and other factors outlined in our filings with the SEC including our 10-K, which will be filed this week. Our website, bry.com, has a link to the earnings release and our slides for this call. Any information, including forward-looking statements made today or contained in the earnings release and that presentation, reflects our analysis as of the date made. We have no plans or duty to update them except as required by law. Please refer to the tables in our earnings release and on our website for reconciliation between all adjusted measures mentioned in today's call and the related gap measures. We will also post the replay link of this call and the transcript on our website. I will now turn the call over to Fernando.

Thanks, Todd. Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining us. A year ago, during my first earnings call as Barry's CEO, I highlighted three priorities. One, we're committed to delivering top-tier shareholder returns by being a cost-effective producer, optimizing production without compromising safety. Two, we had the assets and the technical team to achieve that goal and successfully navigate California's regulatory environment. And three, we would pursue accretive bolt-on opportunities in California. 2023 was a strong year for Berry, and we delivered on all fronts. We generated top-tier returns for our shareholders, we held production essentially flat with less capex than planned, and we expanded our production base and future cash flow with two financially accretive acquisitions. In 2023, we generated $97 million of adjusted free cash flow and returned $65 million to shareholders. More than half of the adjusted free cash flow, $55 million, was attributable to the fourth quarter, which is typically our largest adjusted free cash flow quarter of the year. Compared to the third quarter, that represents a 54% increase, or $19 million. Total annual production was at the top end of our updated guidance, and we achieved that with a strong safety performance, highlighted by zero lost time incidents during the year. Our full year average production of 25,400 barrels a day was driven by innovative reservoir management practices, a successful drilling and work over campaign, and bolt-on acquisitions that benefited the fourth quarter. Also in Q4, our overall daily production increased to 25,900 barrels a day. We improved reservoir management practices in our thermal diatomite asset and increased the asset space performance by 5% without additional drilling activity. At year end, Barry had 103 million barrels of proved reserves and replaced 176% of our California production through reservoir extensions and acquisitions. We continue to be encouraged by test results of deeper stacked oil and gas reservoirs in our north midway sunset field, which can be produced without steam. We are producing lot of oil from two wells in the low triple digits per day, which is higher than our average new well production from shallow reservoirs in California. We will continue to appraise the area with additional wells. One of our priorities for 2023 was identifying accretive producing bolt-on opportunities. With the McPherson acquisition and the smaller working interest acquired at the end of the year, we are seeing the benefits of that focus in both cash flow and production. Barry remains well positioned to be a consolidator in California. We continue to aggressively pursue acquisitions that support production, generate operational and corporate synergies, increase future cash flow, and maximize shareholder value. With that, I will turn the call over to Mike.