ConocoPhillips

Welcome to the second 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 second quarter 2024 earnings conference call. On the call today are several members of the ConocoPhillips leadership team, including Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO, Bill Bullock, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Andy O'Brien, Senior Vice President of Strategy, Commercial, Sustainability, and Technology, Nick Olds, 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'll make four 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. Third, when we move to Q&A, we will take one question per caller. With that, I will turn the call over to Ryan.

Thanks, Phil, and thank you to everyone for joining our second quarter 2024 earnings conference call. It was another busy quarter for the company. We continued to execute on our returns-focused value proposition. We announced a 34% increase in our ordinary dividends starting in the fourth quarter. We announced the planned acquisition of Marathon Oil, and we further progressed our global commercial LNG strategy. Now, starting with results, we delivered record production in the second quarter with strong contributions from the entire portfolio. In the lower 48, we still expect to deliver low single-digit production growth in 2024 at a lower level of capital spending relative to 2023. Internationally, production continued to ramp up at Surmont Pad 267 and the Montney in Canada, Ojai Phase 4B in China, and four subsea typhax in Norway. And we continue to make strong progress at Willow and on our LNG projects at Port Arthur and Qatar. Shifting to commercial LNG, we recently signed two additional long-term regasification and sales agreements to deliver volumes into Europe and Asia, both of which will start in 2027. With these agreements, we have now secured just under 6 million tons per annum of volume placement for our offtake commitments. And we continue to work new offtake and placement opportunities as we look to expand our commercial LNG portfolio up to 10 to 15 million tons per annum in the coming years. Now, regarding our planned acquisition of Marathon Oil, we remain very excited about this transaction, and integration planning activities are underway to ensure a seamless transition upon close. the Marathon Oil shareholder vote has been set for August 29th, and we are working through the FTC's second request that we received in mid-July. We still expect to close the transaction late in the fourth quarter. On return of capital, we remain committed to distributing at least $9 billion to shareholders this year on a standalone basis. As we said back in May, we will be incorporating our VROC into our base dividend starting in the fourth quarter, representing a 34% increase in the ordinary dividend. And consistent with our long-term track record, we are confident that we can grow this dividend at a top quartile rate relative to the S&P 500. Finally, as we previously announced with the marathon acquisition, we will be increasing our annualized buyback run rate by $2 billion upon closing with a plan to retire the equivalent amount of newly issued equity in two to three years. So to wrap up, we're pleased with our operational execution, and we are looking forward to closing the Marathon transaction later this year. Now let me turn the call over to Bill to cover our second quarter performance and 2024 guidance in more detail.