Antero Midstream Corporation

Greetings and welcome to the Antero Resources first quarter 2024 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce Brandon Krueger, Vice President of Finance and Treasurer of Antero Resources and Chief Financial Officer of Antero Midstream. Thank you. You may begin.

Good morning. Thank you for joining us for Antero's first quarter 2024 investor conference call. We'll spend a few minutes going through the financial and operating highlights, and then we'll open it up for Q&A. I would also like to direct you to the homepage of our website at www.anteroresources.com, where we have provided a separate earnings call presentation that will be reviewed during today's call. Today's call may contain certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to our earnings press release for important disclosures regarding such measures, including reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP financial measures. Joining me on the call today are Paul Rady, Chairman, CEO, and President, Michael Kennedy, CFO, Dave Canalongo, Senior Vice President of Liquids Marketing and Transportation, and Justin Fowler, Senior Vice President of Natural Gas Marketing. I will now turn the call over to Paul.

Thank you, Brendan. Good morning, everyone. I'll start my comments on slide number three, titled Drilling and Completion Efficiencies. As I started my comments off last quarter, the year 2023 was a transformational year for Antero for operational efficiency gains. This year, 2024, continues that trend. Starting with the chart on the top left-hand side of the slide, days per 10,000 lateral feet drilled averaged 5.4 days during the first quarter, down from 5.5 days in 2023. On the completion side, we averaged a quarterly record of 11.3 stages per day during the first quarter, an increase from the pace in 2023 of just under 11 stages per day. These operational improvements result in shorter cycle times as shown on the bottom of the page. Our year-to-date cycle time per pad is currently trending ahead of last year's 2023 average. There are many inputs that lead to these operational improvements as every single line item gets examined by our team. However, the most impactful change in 2024 has been improved efficiency in zipper swaps that allows us to move from well to well on a pad without having any true downtime. We estimate that this new completion technology will save more than an hour of pumping time each day and will result in further increases in completion times. Our operations also benefit from Antero Midstream's water infrastructure. providing industry-leading water deliverability rates for our completions. Avoiding the use of water trucks significantly reduces pad site congestion that we would otherwise get from water and sand trucks accessing the pad, something that many of our peers have to contend with. Now, let's look at how these improvements led to our peer-leading capital efficiency. The chart on slide number four compares capital efficiency of the natural gas peer group. Put simply, this is the amount of capital required to achieve a maintenance level of production. Antero has the lowest capital per MCF equivalent of its peer group at just 55 cents per MCFE. This is 40% below the peer average of 90 cents per MCFE. Our best-in-class operating efficiency, combined with significant liquids exposure, led to positive free cash flow during the first quarter and is expected to generate free cash flow for the full year. Now, to touch on the current liquids and natural gas liquids, or MGL, fundamentals, I will turn it over to our Senior Vice President of Liquids Marketing and Transportation, Dave Canalongo, for his comments.