Murphy Oil Corporation

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Murphy Oil Corporation third quarter 2024 earnings conference call and webcast. If at any time during this call you need assistance, please press star zero for the operator. I would now like to turn the conference over to Kelly Whitley, Vice President, Investor Relations and Communications. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us on our third quarter earnings call today. With me are Roger Jenkins, Chief Executive Officer, Eric Hambly, President and Chief Operating Officer, and Tom Morales, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Please refer to the informational slides we've placed on the investor relations section of our website as you follow along with our webcast today. Throughout today's call, production numbers, reserves, and financial amounts are adjusted to exclude our non-controlling interest in the Gulf of Mexico. Slide two. Please keep in mind that some of the comments made during this call be considered forward-looking statements as defined in the private securities litigation reform act of 1995. as such no assurances can be given that these events will occur or that the projections will be attained a variety of factors may exist that cause us the results to differ for further discussion of risk factors see murphy's 2023 annual report on form 10k on file with the sec Murphy takes no duty to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. I will now turn the call over to Roger Jenkins. Roger.

Thank you, Kelli. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for listening in on our call today. As we turn to slide three, I'd like to reiterate our corporate priorities of deliver, execute, explore, and return. In the third quarter, we focused on executing our operations, advancing our exploration program, and progressing shareholder returns. Murphy produced 185,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day during the third quarter. We progressed our Gulf of Mexico well program and brought online Eagleford shale wells as planned. I'm pleased to announce that early in the fourth quarter, we initiated construction of the Loc De Vang production platform for our field development project in Vietnam. Also in the third quarter, we began drilling the Ha Su Vang or HSV exploration well, which initiated our two-well exploration program in Vietnam. I'm pleased at the progress we've made at returning funds to shareholders in Murphy 3.0 while maintaining a leading balance sheet. During the third quarter, we repurchased $194 million of stock or 5.4 million shares. Year to date, Murphy has repurchased $300 million of stock or 8 million shares at an average price of $37.46 a share. Overall, we've reduced our share count by 16% since the year end of 2018. On slide four, last quarter we announced the removal to Murphy 3.0 of our disclosed capital allocation framework. As a result, we now target allocating a minimum, emphasis on minimum, of 50% of our adjusted free cash flow to shareholder returns, primarily through buybacks. I highlight that this is a minimum return threshold, which allows us to buy more stock in times of price dislocation, such as the past quarter and certainly now. Most significantly, year to date, we've returned 110% of our adjusted free cash flow to shareholders as buybacks. A reminder, adjusted free cash flow for Murphy is after our extensive dividend that we pay. As prescribed in our framework, the remaining adjusted free cash flow will be allocated to our balance sheet as we're committed to our $1.0 billion long-term debt goal. I'm proud of what our team has accomplished in recent years with our balance sheet improvements. in particular since launching the capital allocation framework two years ago. Since that time, we've repurchased $450 million of shares and increased our dividend by 70%. As of November the 5th, we have approximately $650 million remaining under our approved 1.1 billion total share repurchase authorization. On slide five, Murphy produced an average of 185,000 barrels equivalent in the third quarter with 88,000 barrels of oil. As usual, we realized the premium to WTI with the realized oil price of nearly $76 per barrel. While our realized NGL price was nearly $22, and natural gas was $1.47 per thousand cubic feet, helped by price diversification and fixed price forward sale contracts in Canada. As a result, Murphy generated over $700 million of revenue in the quarter, excluding our non-controlling interest. I'm now going to turn the call over to our CFO, Tom Morales, for an update on financial results. Tom. Thank you, Roger.