Laredo Petroleum, Inc.

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Laredo Petroleum Inc.' 's third quarter 2021 earnings conference call. My name is Brian, and I will be your operator for today. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. We will be conducting a question-answer session after the financial and operations report. As a reminder, this conference call 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 Pigott, 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. 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 reference to non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations to these GAAP financial measures are included in our press release and presentation, which we issued yesterday, that details our financial and operating results for the third quarter of 2021. If you do not have a copy of this press 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 us today. Our strong third quarter results demonstrate our success integrating the Sabalo acquisition. We are ending the fourth quarter in 2022 with strong momentum, both operationally and financially. Before jumping into our quarterly results, let me take a few moments to reflect on our key strategic accomplishments over the last two years. Like most of our industry, prior to 2019, Laredo was stuck in a cycle of outspending cash flow to pursue growth and to maximize production. Our balance sheet was heavily levered, our inventory was largely gas-weighted, and the prospect of generating sustainable free cash flow was far in the future. We are in a much better position today. In two short years, we have fundamentally transformed Laredo and are now focused on generating free cash flow, improving our margins, strengthening our balance sheet, and operating with the highest ESG standards. Laredo has always been fortunate to have a strong operational team with a track record of creating efficiencies and optimizing the development of our assets. We have all the key ingredients required for sustaining long-term value creation. Let's review some of the key highlights. First, we have acquired key assets that lengthen our inventory life and grew margins through increased oil cuts. We have added more than 55,000 net acres of oil-weighted, high-margin inventory underwritten at oil prices well below today's strip. With seven years of quality oil-weighted inventory, we have fully transitioned our development program to the highest rate of return projects. Second, with an improved asset portfolio and disciplined capital investments, We are now positioned to deliver sustainable free cash flow beginning in the fourth quarter of 2021 at current commodity prices. We recognize the importance of this to investors and will continue to run the company with this goal in mind. Third, our capital structure has significantly improved and we are focused on reducing leverage to under one times net debt adjusted EBITDA, potentially as soon as 2023. This trajectory will allow us to consider more shareholder-friendly actions in the near future and return cash to our owners. All options are on the table. And finally, we recognize that simply producing our products and delivering returns is not enough. We have redoubled our commitment to ESG excellence and are proud to be pursuing multiple projects that reduce our environmental footprint. We have proven our ability to capture value-adding transactions in today's competitive A&D market. Our operating teams are second to none and will seek to continue to find innovative ways to create value on new acreage while improving margins and maximizing inventory. We will continue to seek accretive, leverage-reducing transactions to accelerate and further increase the competitiveness of our company. While we are proud of our collective accomplishments, our management team and employees are hardly satisfied, and we recognize the great opportunity that lies before us. We are just getting started and are working hard every day to capture value for our stakeholders. I will now hand the call over to Karen for an operational update.