Northern Oil and Gas, Inc.

Greetings and welcome to Northern Oil and Gas first quarter 2023 conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during a conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Evelyn Inferna, Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you, operator. Good morning and welcome to our first quarter 2023 earnings conference call. Yesterday, after the market closed, we released our financial results for the first quarter. You can access our earnings release and presentation on our investor relations website. Our Form 10-Q will be filed with the SEC within the next few days. I am joined this morning by NOG's Chief Executive Officer, Nick O'Grady. our President, Adam Derlam, our Chief Financial Officer, Chad Allen, and our Chief Technical Officer, Jim Evans. Our agenda for today's call is as follows. Nick will provide his remarks on the quarter and our recent accomplishments. And Adam will give you an overview of operations. And last, Chad will review our first quarter financials. After our prepared remarks, the executive team will be available to answer any questions. Before we go any further, let me cover our safe harbor language. Please be advised that our remarks today, including the answers to our questions, may include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the private securities litigation reform act. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to be materially different from the expectations contemplated by our forward-looking statements. Those risks include, among others, matters that we've 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 today's call, we may discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures, including adjusted EBITDA, adjusted net income, and free cash flow. Reconciliations of these measures to the closest GAAP measures can be found in our earnings release. With that, let me turn the call over to Nick.

Thank you, Evelyn. Welcome and good morning, everyone, and thank you for your interest in our company. Given the strong, consistent results and lack of big changes this quarter, I'll be more brief than usual. I'll get right down to it with only three key points. Number one, stellar execution. In our first quarter of the year, NOG's national diversified model delivered once again with better than expected production and cash flows. We continue to fire on all cylinders. Our mascot acquisition was closed on time and our assets are on track to deliver growth throughout 2023. Generated record adjusted EBITDA in the quarter and record oil and total volumes, despite significantly lower commodity prices. Even with the closing of our mascot acquisition this quarter, our LQA leverage ratio was down sequentially capital spending is right on track at about 20% of the midpoint of our guidance and in line with our anticipated 60% first half weighting. In a year of notably weak gas pricing, our oil properties have picked up the slack with our oil cut rising materially in the past few quarters. Number two, growth. In a middling year for commodity pricing, we are seeing tremendous opportunities on all fronts, from our organic properties, from our ground game, and from an ever-expanding variety of growth prospects. Given our size, scale, and diversity as the largest national non-op franchise, we are unique in having access to the best of the best properties across both commodities and multiple bases. Additionally, we've expanded our bolt-on opportunity set beyond our traditional fractional non-op asset acquisitions. We are pursuing other growth avenues, including partnerships directly with the operating as seen with MPDC, co-bidding in M&A as a partner to operators with similar economic discipline, and other unique structured solutions to deliver solid returns for our investors and drive the compounding of returns over time. Adam will talk about it further, but we continue to make traction with our operating partners as a superior capital provider for the co-development of oil and gas assets. We have the scale and the capital to provide solutions for these operators in ways others can't, and we pride ourselves on being a straightforward and reliable counterparty with a track record of execution. Number three, capital allocation. Our goal is to provide our shareholders with the highest possible total return over the long term. We have implemented a multi-pronged approach, including a share repurchase program, repurchasing debt securities at discounts, and increasing the cash dividends for our common stockholders. We recently announced a 9 percent increase to our common stock dividend for the second quarter of 2023, our ninth straight increase. Additionally, we tactically repurchased common shares during periods of volatility. Since we initiated our dividend program and share buyback in mid-2021, we've returned well north of $200 million to investors. And our view at NOG is that our scale should help us build a shareholder return program that can grow over time. As always, we'll be mindful of risk and leverage, but the power of what we've built should continue to deliver an attractive risk-adjusted total return, as the company under our management has consistently done over the past five and a half years. During our tenure, NOG's total return outperformance versus driven by a capital allocation strategy rooted in dynamism. The flexibility inherent in our strategy, as well as our business model, has allowed us to adjust our capital allocation to where the greatest opportunities exist at any point in time, all the while providing a solid and growing cash return via the dividend. We continue to see this as superior to more dogmatic return programs, and the results in the marketplace speak for themselves. In closing, 2023 is off to a strong start for the NOG team, and we remain confident that we can continue to deliver growth opportunities in the coming years. I will remind you, as I always do, that we are a company run by investors for investors. With that, I will turn it over to Adam.