Coterra Energy Inc.

Good morning. My name is Audra, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Cotera Energy Third Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star one again. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Dan Guffey, Vice President of Finance, Investor Relations, and Treasurer. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Good morning, and thank you for joining Cotera Energy's third quarter 2024 earnings conference call. Today's prepared remarks will include an overview from Tom Jordan, Chairman, CEO, and President, Shane Young, Executive Vice President and CFO, and Blake Sergo, Senior Vice President of Operations. Following our prepared remarks, we will take your questions during our Q&A session. As a reminder, on today's call, we will make forward-looking statements based on current expectations. Additionally, some of our comments will reference non-GAAP financial measures. Forward-looking statements and other disclaimers, as well as reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures, were provided in our earnings release and updated investor presentation, both of which can be found on our website. With that, I'll turn the call over to Tom.

Thank you, Dan, and welcome to all of you who are joining our call this morning. As you saw from our release last night, Cotera had an excellent third quarter. Our volumes for oil, gas, and barrel of oil equivalent came in above the high end of our guidance, with capital coming in below the low end of our guidance range. Furthermore, we raised our production guidance and lowered our capital guidance for the full year. We expect 2024 to be our third consecutive year of delivering differentiated organic oil growth. This is made possible by our asset quality and growing capital efficiency, which are related to one another. Shane and Blake will walk you through our financial and operational results in some detail. Blake will also give you an update on our Wyndham Row project in Culberson County. In a nutshell, our results have been outstanding, and we expect similar projects to be a part of our program for many years to come. Slide 13 in our earnings presentation lists a few upcoming Culberson projects for future years. Our Wyndham row has confirmed what we have stated all along. These projects are well calibrated and highly predictable. Although we are not prepared to be granular on 2025 plans, as you would expect, We hold significant optionality and flexibility. As an example, if we were to continue simulfracking in Culberson County through 2025, it would increase our capital efficiency and result in an ongoing cadence of regular quarterly oil growth. We could achieve this within our framework of capital discipline and a conservative reinvestment rate. We're also pleased to highlight some of our recent New Mexico results in our earnings presentation. More to come on that from Blake. Although we remain constructive on natural gas markets, current prices have not recovered to the extent that would justify incremental drilling and completion activity in the Marcellus. We currently have no drilling or completion activity on our Marcellus assets. Additionally, We continue to curtail and shut in volumes and will do so until we see materially better spot natural gas prices in the Northeast. 2025 promises to deliver a more constructive natural gas market. The combination of growing LNG exports, increased electrical generation demand, and the prospect of winter weather suggest a tighter supply-demand picture for natural gas in 2025 and beyond. In the meantime, we have other assets that are generating superior returns in our investments, and we have pivoted to them in 2024. You may also notice that we have recently entered into a handful of LNG sales agreements, as illustrated by slide 5 in our earnings presentation. These agreements are the result of our multi-year effort to further diversify our natural gas marketing portfolio by gaining price exposure to international markets. We are continuing to explore further opportunities along these lines. Blake will provide details on this. As we have repeatedly said, we manage our company by disciplined capital allocation, not by production goals. We have the luxury of doing so because we have top tier oil and natural gas assets with a low cost of supply. These assets coupled with our operational capabilities can consistently deliver leading-edge returns on low corporate reinvestment rates through the cycles. Slide six, which provides a snapshot of our inventory, shows that we can do this for many, many years to come. The robustness of our assets underwrites our shareholder-friendly return of capital program and our fortress balance sheet. Our approach to the business is simple. Build a top-tier operational team a top-tier subsurface team, develop a portfolio of top-tier assets that offer geographic and commodity diversity, and let data, value creation, and sound financial analysis guide capital allocation decisions. Through it all, maintain a relentless focus on continuous improvement. At Cotera, it's progress over comfort. It's that simple, and we live by it. With that, I will turn the call over to Shane.