ConocoPhillips

Welcome to the first quarter 2024 ConocoPhillips earnings conference call. My name is Liz, and I will be your operator for today's call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session. During the question and answer session, if you have a question, please press star 1-1 on your touchtone phone. I will now turn the call over to Phil Gresh, Vice President, Investor Relations. Sir, you may begin.

Thank you, Liz, and welcome everyone to our first quarter 2024 earnings conference call. On the call today, we have several members of the ConcoPhillips leadership team, including Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO, Tim Leach, Advisor to the CEO, Bill Bullock, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Andy O'Brien, Senior Vice President of Strategy, Commercial, Sustainability, and Technology, Nick Old, Executive Vice President of Lower 48, and Kirk Johnson, Senior Vice President of Global Operations. Ryan and Bill will kick it off with opening remarks, after which the team will be available for your questions. A few quick reminders. First, along with today's release, we published supplemental financial materials and a slide presentation, which you can find on the Investor Relations website. Second, during this call, we will make forward-looking statements based on current expectations. Actual results may differ due to factors noted in today's release. and in our periodic SEC filings. We will make reference to some non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations to the nearest corresponding GAAP measure can be found in today's release and on our website. And third, of course, when we move to Q&A, we will be taking one question per call. So with that, I will turn it over to Ryan.

Thanks, Phil. And thank you to everyone for joining our first quarter 2024 earnings conference call. It was another solid quarter of focused execution across the portfolio on our strategic plan. Starting with our international projects, we continued to ramp up production at Sermont Pad 267 in Canada, Bohai Bay 4B in China, and three subsea tiebacks in Norway. And we expect to start up the fourth subsea tieback in Norway in the next month. In Canada, at Montney, production reached a new record level following the startup of the second central processing facility, leading to over 20% growth versus the fourth quarter. Shifting to our other projects, we are wrapping up a successful first major winter construction season at Willow this week, and module fabrication is going according to plan. As we build out our LNG portfolio, our Qatar and Port Arthur projects are also progressing well. Moving to the lower 48, our primary focus remains on capital efficient growth as we continue to improve efficiency in drilling and completions. For 2024, we still expect to deliver low single-digit production growth at flat activity levels with lower capital spending versus 2023. Shifting to return of capital, we remain on track to distribute at least $9 billion to shareholders this year. And we announced a VROC of $0.20 per share for the second quarter, consistent with our guidance of a 60-40 split between buybacks and cash distributions for the year. To wrap up, it was a solid start to the year. We are on track with the full-year guidance that we laid out back in February, which anticipates a well-balanced growth across our global portfolio. And as we discussed at our analyst and investor meeting last year, we continue to invest in our deep, durable, and diverse asset base, which will drive significant cash flows and shareholder distributions over the course of our 10-year plan. Now let me turn the call over to Bill to cover our first quarter performance and 2024 guidance in more detail.