PDC Energy, Inc.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the PDC Energy First Quarter 2023 Conference 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 1-1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising that your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1-1 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Aaron Vandervoort. You may begin.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. On today's call, we have President and CEO Bart Brookman, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Scott Myers, Executive Vice President Lance Locke, and Senior Vice President of Operations Dave Lillo. Yesterday afternoon, we issued our press release and posted a presentation that accompanies our remarks today. We also filed our Form 10-Q. The press release and presentation are available on the Investor Relations page of our website at www.pdc.com. On today's call, we'll reference both forward-looking statements and non-U.S. GAAP financial measures. The appropriate disclosures and reconciliations, including discussions of risk factors that could cause the actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements, can be found on slide two and the appendix of that presentation. With that, I'll send the call over to our CEO, Bart Brookman.

Thank you, Erin, and good morning, everyone. Let me begin with a big call out to the PDC operating teams in Texas and Colorado and our EH&S group. Both basins are approaching five years with no lost time injuries to PDC employees, an exceptional accomplishment. Thank you for your sincere commitment to safety. The first quarter, a solid performance for the company. Production of 22 million barrels of oil equivalent or 244,000 BOE per day in line with our expectations. Free cash flow for the quarter of $100 million on a capital spend of approximately $415 million. CapEx coming in better than our expectations as we are seeing per well cost improvements in both basins. Dave and Scott will provide more detail on this encouraging trend in a moment. Cost for the company remain in check. LOE for the quarter, $3.33 per BOE, and GNA of $1.89 per BOE. Both metrics beating our expectations. We exited the quarter with a 0.5 times leverage ratio and an extremely strong balance sheet. And during the quarter, the company returned $170 million of capital to our shareholders with the retirement of 2.1 million shares of our stock and a 40 cent per share fixed dividend. Again, great results, a solid quarter with solid execution. Now, an exciting update on our outlook for the second quarter and the balance of the year. April is experiencing record production for both basins, a result of exceptional midstream and individual well performance, along with an accelerated Q1 turn-in-line schedule where two-thirds of the quarterly TILs occurred in March. We're pleased that the outlook for the second quarter production has been increased to a range of 265 to 277,000 BOE per day, And our 2023 annual production guidance is now anticipated to be near the upper end of our guidance range. Also, with the improved well costs I mentioned earlier, our 2023 capital spend is being amended downward to a range of $1.35 billion to $1.45 billion, resulting in anticipated 2023 free cash flow of $875 million, an increase of $50 million from prior guidance. These are encouraging improvements in our outlook for production, capital spend, free cash flow, and overall capital efficiency, laying the groundwork for a very strong second quarter and a successful 2023. Now, for more details around the company's operations, I'll turn this call over to Dave Lillo.