Earthstone Energy, Inc.

Good afternoon and welcome to the Earthstone Energy's conference call. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference call, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. Joining us today from Earthstone are Robert Anderson, President and Chief Executive Officer, Mark Lumpkin, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Steve Collins, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, and Scott Dellander, Vice President of Finance. I'll turn the call to Clay Johnson, Director of Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you, and welcome to our first quarter 2023 earnings conference call. Before we get started, I'd like to remind you that today's call will contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities law. Although management believes these statements are based on reasonable expectations, They can give no assurance that they will prove to be correct. These statements are subject to certain risks, uncertainties, and assumptions, as described in our annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2022, our quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2023, and the first quarter of 2023 earning announcement. This document can be found in the investor relations sections of our website, www.earthstoneenergy.com. Should one or more of these risks materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially. This conference call also includes references to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable measure under GAAP are contained in our earnings announcement issued yesterday. Also, please note information recorded on this call speaks only as of today, May 4th, 2023. Therefore, any time-sensitive information may no longer be accurate at the time of any replay listening or transcript reading. Today's call will begin with comments from Robert Anderson, our President and CEO, followed by remarks from Steve Collins, our COO, and Mark Lumpkin, our CFO. And then we'll have some closing comments from Robert. I'll now turn the call over to Robert.

Thanks, Clay, and welcome, everyone. Thank you for taking the time to join us today after what I suspect has been a really busy morning for you all. Earthstone entered 2023 strategically advantaged with an enhanced and increased scale in the premier Permian Basin with a deep and high-quality inventory and a strengthened financial position. This strategically advantaged position is clearly apparent by the solid results we posted once again. I'm pleased to say we are off to a great start this year with these strong results forming a solid foundation to build upon during the remainder of 2023. Slide five of our investor presentation that has been posted on our website highlights the significant performance increases we have achieved compared to the first quarter of 2022. Earthstone's operational excellence continued during the first quarter of 2023 with total production surpassing our internal forecast and consensus estimates. Our low decline, stable production base, and strong new well results drove our production outperformance for the quarter. We reported first quarter production of 104,450 BOE per day with oil over 46,000 barrels per day. We have now had two quarters in a row with production approaching 105,000 BOE per day and continue to showcase the quality and productivity of our inventory. Steve will highlight several wells that drove our strong quarterly outperformance. The strength of our operational performance was also reflected in our strong financial results. Near record level production, combined with our low cost structure, led to adjusted EBITDAX for the quarter of $267 million. This robust EBITDAX and rigorous capital investment discipline led to the generation of free cash flow of approximately $42 million in the quarter. This free cash flow for the quarter allowed us to continue to execute our plan to reduce debt, lowering our debt to just under $1 billion with a similar amount of liquidity, which Mark will highlight further. The strong overall performance we posted for the first quarter clearly represent the merits of our focused, proven acquisition strategy. At Earstone, we continuously focus on creating long-term value for our shareholders while fostering a culture of doing the right thing. Public confidence and our reputation are valuable assets. As such, we place critical focus on reducing our environmental impact and conducting business and interacting with our employees, contractors, landowners, suppliers, governmental entities, the public, and the communities in which we operate responsibly and ethically. We are also committed to providing our employees and contractors with safe working conditions in an environment conducive to creativity, continuous improvement, and maximizing job satisfaction. We believe providing ESG-related information and metrics to our shareholders and other stakeholders is essential while communicating how we plan to progress over time. Regulators have continued to increase the threshold by which we must operate, and we are investing the necessary capital to do so. In order to communicate with our stakeholders in a transparent and open manner, we're working on our inaugural ESG report. We expect to have our report published by sometime next quarter. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Steve Collins to provide an update on operations.