Northern Oil and Gas, Inc.

Greetings and welcome to the Northern Oil and Gas Fourth Quarter and Year-End 2020 Earnings Conference. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. Participants connected via phone that would like to ask a question may do so by pressing star 1 on their telephone keypad. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star 0 for an operator. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Mike Kelly, Chief Strategy Officer. Thank you, sir. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Donna, and good morning, everybody. We're happy to welcome you to our fourth quarter 2020 earnings call. I'm joined here this morning with Northern CEO, Nick O'Grady, our COO, Adam Dirlam, our CFO, Chad Allen, our Chief Engineer, Jim Evans, as well as Northern's Chairman, Barama Crotty. Our agenda for today will be as follows. Bram's going to give you the opening remarks, and then he's going to hand the mic over to Nick. After Nick, Adam will give you an overview of our operations, followed by Chad, who will review Northern's Q4 financials and 21 guidance. After that, we will head into the Q&A. Before we get going, though, let's cover the safe harbor language. Please be advised that our remarks today, including the answers to your questions, may include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. These forward-looking statements are subject to risk and uncertainties that could cause actual results to be materially different from the expectations contemplated by these forward-looking statements. Those risks include, among others, matters that we have described in our earnings release as well as in our filings with the SEC, including our annual report on Form 10-K and our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. We disclaim any obligation to update these forward-looking statements. During this conference call, we may discuss non-GAAP financial measures, including adjusted net income and adjusted EBITDA. Reconciliations of these measures to the closest gap measure can be found in the earnings release that we covered this morning. With that taken care of, I will now hand the call over to Northern's Chairman, Buram Akradi.

Thank you, Mike. As most of you know, I began investing in Northern in 2016, and subsequently, I filed a 13D outlining changes that I thought were needed in order to transform NOG into a strong and exceptional business. I am pleased to report this morning that I believe that we have been successful in implementing almost every one of these changes and very excited about more improvements ahead. We are in an enviable position We have become the largest US non-op consolidator, and the opportunities ahead of us are tremendous. We have a pipeline of acquisition opportunities and the capital to take advantage of these opportunities as well. The strategy is to continue to get bigger and stronger. However, we will do so in a financially prudent fashion, which includes a commitment to to building and maintaining a fortress-like balance sheet. When I joined the board in 2017, we had a leverage ratio greater than six times. Today, we project our leverage below two times for 2021, and our goal is to further reduce leverage to around one time in the next several years. We also have a great alignment between our shareholders, board of directors, and management. This is a unique and clear advantage. Our board of directors are a significant shareholder in Northern. Finally, we have assembled an all-star management team led by one of the most experienced and accomplished executives in energy sector, Nick O'Grady. Nick originally joined Northern as a CFO in 2018, and I quickly realized that he was the executive that should be leading the company. Nick was promoted to CEO at the end of 2019. I have truly enjoyed partnering with Nick in developing and implementing the board of directors, the strategic vision for Northern. Our hedging strategies in 2019 provided Northern with financial security and stability in 2020. It provided NOG significant free cash flow last year while many other companies did not make it through. We've been able to secure and extend new financing and raise additional equity which has allowed the company to significantly improve our balance sheet and our future cash flow which is now approaching I have complete confidence in Nick and the entire executive team at Northern to continue executing our long-term strategy. We have accomplished a tremendous amount over the past several years, but I am most excited about the future at Northern. We now have the balance sheet and acquisition opportunities that will enable Northern to accelerate its growth. I'm very excited to see our strategy play out through the remainder of 2021 and beyond. We are also in the position to start a responsible and modest dividend by this summer that we can grow over time. Because of my confidence in Nick and the leadership team at Northern, I no longer feel that it's necessary for me to be on the NOG's conference calls. Of course, I will continue to be a very active chairman in formulating the vision and long-term strategy for the company with other members of the board, Nick, and rest of the executive team. Finally, I want to thank Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and RBC, amongst others, for being great partners and supporting Northern throughout this exciting adventure. With that, I will now turn it over to our CEO, Nick O'Grady.