Crescent Energy Company

Good morning, and thank you for joining Crescent's second quarter 2022 earnings call. Our prepared remarks today will come from our CEO, David Rocacharli, and myself. Todd Falk, Chief Accounting Officer, and Ben Connor and Clay Rind, both Executive Vice Presidents, are also here today and available during Q&A. Today's call may contain projections and other forward-looking statements within the meeting of the Federal Securities Law. These statements are subject to risk and uncertainties, including commodity price volatility and the continued impacts of COVID-19, geopolitical conflict, including in Russia and Ukraine, our business strategies and other factors that may cause actual results to differ from those expressed or implied in these statements, and our other disclosures. We disclaim any obligation to update any forward-looking statements after today's call. In addition, today's discussion may include disclosure regarding non-GAAP financial measures. For reconciliation of historical non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measure, please reference our 10Q and earnings press release available on our website. With that, I will turn it over to David.

Thanks, Brandi, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate your joining us today for our second quarter 2022 earnings call. It's been less than a year since we began trading publicly as Crescent Energy, and we continue to be excited about the market opportunity ahead of us. For over a decade, our organization has maintained a consistent strategy based on cash flow, risk management, and investment returns, with the goal of creating long-term value for shareholders through commodity cycles. We believe now more than ever that Crescent remains exceptionally well-positioned to execute on this strategy. We are pleased to share with you today's results, as this is our first full quarter, including our recent Uinta Basin acquisitions. As a reminder, we will also take your specific questions at the end of our remarks. Overall, our second quarter results were in line with our performance expectations as we focused on operations of our existing assets and the successful integration of our highly accretive Uinta Basin acquisition. The addition of the Uinta assets has significantly increased the scale of our production base, reduced our per unit cost structure, and added high margin oil inventory. which has resulted in significant growth in our business. Relative to our first quarter results, net production has increased 18% and adjusted EBITDA has increased 92%, offering another tangible example of our acquisition strategy creating value for shareholders. In the second quarter, we continued to generate significant free cashflow and strong returns on invested capital. allowing us to maintain a healthy balance sheet and return capital to shareholders through our fixed quarterly dividend structure. Operationally, we continue to execute on our 2022 capital program, having maintained three rigs across the Uinta and Eagleford and brought online 13 gross operated wells for the quarter. Additionally, we participated in nine gross and two net wells drilled across our non-operated assets in the Eagleford. Crescent's large held by production resource position has always allowed us to make returns driven development decisions. And in today's commodity environment, our quality multi-year inventory continues to see exceptional returns on capital with short payback periods. While operational performance has been strong and the business continues to grow significantly, Crescent remains relatively new to the public markets. We believe it's critical that we continue to increase market awareness of the company, our strategy, and our proven track record of generating shareholder value. As I said earlier, we describe our strategy as focused on cash flow, risk management, and returns. We generate significant free cash flow from our large diversified and low decline producing asset base. We manage risk through a portfolio approach to asset selection, and by maintaining our strong balance sheet supported by our hedge program. And we seek to deliver strong returns on invested capital, both through internal development and complimentary accretive acquisitions, all in order to drive profitable long-term value for shareholders. This is the same strategy we've executed on for the last decade in the private markets across commodity cycles, and we continue to believe it's the optimal approach to creating value in our sector. Turning to the market backdrop, we would highlight that following years of underinvestment in the oil and gas sector, we are in a period of unique volatility, which has been driven by the rapid recovery of global economies post-pandemic and exacerbated by unprecedented geopolitical dynamics. While sustained higher commodity prices have bolstered our overall outlook, broader inflationary pressures and supply chain constraints continue to manifest across the oil and gas industry and will remain a key theme for the remainder of this year, at least. In the A&D market, we're on pace to evaluate around 150 to 200 opportunities this year, which we firmly believe provides us with a differentiated view of the opportunity set available today. Given the heightened commodity price environment, we've seen a significant increase in assets on the market in 2022, as private sellers look to capitalize on higher prices and certain publics look to rationalize their portfolios of non-core assets. In our view, the volatility in commodity prices alongside the steep backwardation in the forward curve has widened the bid-ask spread in the A&D market and will likely lead to more failed sales than usual. We believe Crescent is well positioned to create significant shareholder value through this environment given our differentiated investor mindset and broad operational capabilities covering both conventional and unconventional assets, which expands our list of actionable opportunities, ensuring we can find attractive risk-adjusted returns that compliment our existing portfolio. And given the nature of our business today, our low decline rate and multi-year inventory of high returning locations allows us to be patient in evaluating new transactions while remaining well positioned to capitalize on compelling opportunities as they arise from within the large volume of assets on the market today on new acquisitions we remain focused on generating attractive returns through the discipline criteria that has underpinned our investment philosophy for over a decade first and foremost we emphasize m a activity that generates returns in excess of two times our invested capital with sub five-year paybacks second We look for strong downside support through a large producing base and financing that maintains balance sheet strength. And finally, we prioritize opportunities in basins with proven reserves where we have an existing position or we see an ability to scale efficiently, allowing us the opportunity to benefit from both administrative and operational synergies. Throughout our continual portfolio construction over many years, We believe we have proven our ability to capture attractive assets, integrate them into our portfolio, and apply our strong operating skills to find synergies and create value for shareholders. Our recent Uinta acquisition offers a prime example of the benefits of the Crescent platform. With our differentiated business model, including a unique combination of operating, financial, and investment expertise, we were well-positioned to move quickly amidst complex sales process dynamics, and capitalize on a large and compelling opportunity for our shareholders. While maintaining pro forma leverage of 1.3 times, we closed on the acquisition in March for total cash consideration of $690 million, a very attractive headline value for assets with $1 billion of proved developed PV10 at 9x pricing as of March 31st and substantial development upside. We executed three years of hedges on a portion of PDP volumes at closing, ensuring strong downside protection while maintaining significant commodity upside on the large base of unhedged reserves. The assets are a fantastic addition to our existing Rockies footprint, and with 65% oil and low operating costs, they significantly enhance our overall margins and inventory of high returning development locations. Since closing the Uinta acquisition on March 30th, we've made significant progress on integration. We are actively engaged with all stakeholders on our current and future operating plans. Operationally, we plan to run one rig in the Uinta for the remainder of the year. The reduction in activity allows us to manage development timing while our midstream provider adds additional capacity to our infield gathering system to support future volume growth from us and other operators who continue active development programs. Additionally, this allows us to validate both our spacing and completions design optimization relative to the previous operator, which we believe will create more shareholder value over time. Like all capital projects, especially in today's environment where real operational constraints exist, there are risks of delays which could negatively impact some of our planned development activity in the latter part of this year. Furthermore, as I noted earlier, we've continued to see the same broader inflationary pressures and supply chain constraints as the rest of our industry, which remain a byproduct of the higher commodity price environment. While Brandy will review capital guidance in a little more detail, I want to emphasize our team has done an exceptional job of mitigating these headwinds, and our capital guidance for the year remains unchanged. I will now turn to ESG. which is an integral part of everything we do and deeply ingrained in our long-term organizational outlook. We plan to issue our 2021 ESG report later this year, which will include both short- and long-term ESG targets with a focus on EHS and emissions. As touched upon during our first quarter earnings call, in January of this year, we joined the Oil and Gas Methane Partnership 2.0 Initiative, or OGMP 2.0. We believe reducing methane emissions is critical to slowing the impact of climate change, and the first step to methane reduction is high-quality measurement data. The rigorous OGMP 2.0 framework will aid our efforts to create targeted programs to reduce emissions, accurately report our data, and help us to be positioned as an industry leader in emissions reduction over time. Our inaugural implementation plan and annual report to the OGMP 2.0 was rated the highest level gold standard, which means we both adequately adhered to their methane emissions reporting standards, as well as outlined a clear path for identifying and reducing methane emissions above and beyond current reporting requirements. We were pleased to see that additional U.S. operators, such as ConocoPhillips, Devon, and Pioneer, have joined the OGMP 2.0 as well. ensuring that we are in good company as we strive to identify and reduce emissions as an industry. We will continue to keep you updated on our progress in this area and look forward to discussing our sustainability report once formally published. In short, our acquisition strategy, operational performance, and a supportive commodity backdrop have all contributed to the strong results posted this quarter, including our substantial free cash flow generation. With that, I'm happy to turn the call over to Brandy to cover our second quarter 2022 financial results and 2022 outlook. Brandy?

Thank you, David. We are pleased with our results for the first half of this year as we are successfully integrating our accretive Uinta acquisition while maintaining our rigorous commitment to cash flow priorities 1A and 1B, shareholder returns and the balance sheet. Alongside earnings, we announced a quarterly dividend payment of 17 cents per share consistent with the second quarter. We intend to pay 17 cents per share quarterly for the remainder of the year, generating an attractive 5% yield based on recent trading prices. On the balance sheet, we exited the quarter with LTM leverage at 1.2 times and over $500 million in liquidity. As we continue to generate significant free cash flow through the remainder of the year, we expect to reduce leverage to our target level of 1.0 times EBITDA, absent any potential acquisitions. For the second quarter of 2022, our first Full quarter following the Uinta acquisition, we produced over 140,000 net barrels of oil equivalent per day in line with our previous guidance. Additionally, we generated $373 million of adjusted EBITDAX and $137 million of leveraged free cash flow, which represents a 92% and 53% quarter-over-quarter increase, respectively. Our strong second quarter results underscore the relative strength of the business and quick integration of the Uinta assets within our broader portfolio. Operating expenses excluding production and other taxes for the quarter were $14.68 per BOE, an 8% decrease quarter-over-quarter. The improvement is credited to the addition of high-margin UENTA volumes partially offset by higher commodity-link costs. For the remainder of the year, we continue to expect operating costs to trend lower on a dollar-per-BOE basis, which we anticipate will result in full Europex per BOE around the high end of our previous guidance range. The addition of the UN to assets has also modestly increased our differentials, given its production prices as a percentage of WTI, which has been more than offset by the higher oil weighting of our portfolio, increasing our total realizations. Adjusted recurring cash G&A totaled $1.40 per BOE, which was in line with previous expectations and represents an 18% quarter-over-quarter decrease. This decrease was primarily driven by synergies associated with the Uintah Basin acquisition, which added significant scale to the broader business while contributing minimal incremental G&A. Note this calculation excludes certain non-recurring expenses that we incurred associated with the Contango merger, the Uintah acquisition, and the formation of Crescent Energy as a public company, and we expect an incremental $10 million of one-time expenses for the remainder of 2022, including post-merger integration and other transaction-related costs. Moving on to capital spend, we invested $193 million in the second quarter, drilling 16 gross operated locations in the Uinta and nine in the Eagleford. Additionally, we brought online four gross wells in the Uinta and nine in the Eagleford. Our wells brought online during the quarter are posting strong early results. We expect them to pay back in less than 12 months and generate more than two times our capital invested at current commodity prices. Today, we are continuing to operate one rig in the Eagleford and two rigs in the Uinta. As David mentioned, we plan to shift to one rig in the Uinta Basin in this upcoming quarter as we implement and monitor our optimized spacing and completions design and manage volumes ahead of our third-party gas gatherers planned expansion. Our 2022 capital guidance is unchanged at $600 to $700 million, with more than 80% allocated to the operated development in the Eagleford and Uinta Basin. Like our peers, we are seeing inflationary pressures and potential for logistical and other process delays across the business. and we continue to find new ways to mitigate some of these pressures. Based on what we know today, we believe our capital range continues to accurately account for expected inflation as our February guidance incorporated a 10% to 15% increase in capital costs year over year. Given we are seeing additional pressure of around 10% for the remainder of the year, we anticipate our total capital spend to trend towards the mid to high end of our expectations, but still within the targets we outlined in guidance. Moving to our capital markets activities, we continue to engage with the market to expand our followership, improve our flow, and increase equity research coverage. As we touched on last quarter, we recognize that the current market positioning and awareness of Crescent is not yet at a level consistent with peers of similar size. And more nuanced aspects of the business, such as impact hedges have on near-term cash flows, are not fully appreciated and reflected in our current valuation. Market visibility and education is a key piece of our strategic plan for 2022 and beyond, and we are committed to an active approach to building awareness of our story and accessibility to invest in the stock through increased liquidity over time. With that being said, we continue to monitor and balance our intentions to increase market presence with the state of the broader equity markets, which, as you all know, have undergone a period of extended volatility over the first half of the year. Given our initiative to increase market exposure, we do not intend to pursue a share buyback program like many of our public company peers, which we believe would run counter to the creation of long-term value that increased float and market presence would provide. Additionally, we believe the relative shareholder returns of our ongoing development program, alongside preserving balance sheet strength and maintaining ongoing quarterly dividends, is a more attractive use of excess cash flow. In summary, Crescent continues to perform in line with our expectations and remains well positioned to create shareholder value in today's market. We are focused on generating cash flow, making disciplined investments, maintaining our strong balance sheet, and returning cash to investors. With that, I will turn the call back to David.