Laredo Petroleum, Inc.

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Laredo Petroleum first quarter 2021 earnings conference call. My name is Carol, and I will be your operator for today. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. We will be conducting a question and answer session after the financial and operations report. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded for replay purposes. It is now my pleasure to introduce Mr. Ron Haygood, Vice President, Investor Relations. You may proceed, sir.

Thank you and good morning. Joining me today are Jason Paget, President and Chief Executive Officer, Karen Chandler, Senior Vice President and Chief Operations Officer, and Brian Limmerman, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, as well as additional members of our management team. Before we begin this morning, let me remind you that during today's call, we'll be making forward-looking statements. These statements, including those describing our beliefs, goals, expectations, forecasts, and assumptions, are intended to be covered by the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Our actual results may differ from these forward-looking statements for a variety of reasons, many of which are beyond our control. In addition, we will be making references to non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations to GAAP financial measures are included in yesterday's news release. Yesterday afternoon, we issued a news release and presentation detailing our financial and operating results for the first quarter of 2021. We will refer to the presentation during today's call. If you do not have a copy of this news release or presentation, you may access it on our website at www.laredopetro.com. I will now turn the call over to Jason Pagut, President and Chief Executive Officer.

Good morning, and thank you for joining our first quarter 2021 earnings call. Our results for the first quarter are a demonstration of the solid financial management and operational execution that underpins our strategic transformation. We generated $22 million in free cash flow in the quarter as we continue to reduce well costs, which in turn reduce capital expenditures. We sold shares under the ATM program for about $27 million in net proceeds and reduced borrowings under our revolver by $35 million. Our long-term trend of drilling and completion deficiency improvements and innovations such as our company-owned sand mine are indicative of our drive for continuous improvement. Capital efficiency improvements from our transition to Howard County came to fruition this quarter. Production from our first package of wells in Howard County had a substantial impact on production during the quarter, despite downtime due to February's winter storms. Oil production grew 11% sequentially versus the fourth quarter of 2020, and we expect sequential oil growth of 9% to 13% in the second quarter as our second package of wells reaches peak production. We continue to do well on our ESG metrics, flaring or venting only 0.22% of produced natural gas during the quarter. The company has put forward an ambitious plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and reducing and ultimately eliminating reaching flaring is a key component of the plan. To conclude, I would like to recognize the efforts of our operational team to quickly and more importantly, safely restore production after the winter storms in February. With that, Karen will provide more details on our operations.