Ovintiv Inc. (DE)

At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. Members of the investment community will have the opportunity to ask questions and can join the queue at any time by pressing star 1. For members of the media attending in a listen-only mode today, you may quote statements made by any of the OVINTIV representatives. However, members of the media who wish to quote others who are speaking on this call today, we advise you contact those individuals directly to obtain their consent. Please be advised that this conference call may not be recorded or rebroadcast without the expressed consent of OVINTIV. I would now like to turn the conference call over to Steve Campbell from Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Mr. Campbell.

Thanks operator and good morning everyone. Thanks for dialing in today for our third quarter call. Let me remind you that this call is being webcast and the slides are available on our website at oventiv.com. Please take note of the advisories regarding forward-looking statements at the end of our slides and in our disclosure documents filed with CDAR and EDGAR. Following our prepared remarks, we will be available to take your specific questions. Please limit your time to one question and one follow-up This just allows us to get to more of your questions on the call today. I'll now turn it over to our President and CEO, Doug Suttles.

Thanks, Steve, and good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us. We have a lot of strong results to share with you today, and following our prepared remarks, the leadership team will be available to answer your questions. As you can see from our release, we posted very strong third quarter results. This solidified our key deliverables for this year, 2020, and provides us with high confidence in our 2021 plan. We delivered free cash flow this quarter and made a meaningful reduction in our net debt during a very challenging time for our industry. Our results are a direct result of capital discipline and a relentless focus on innovation to drive efficiency into every part of our business. We have been very clear on how we are running the business through the end of 2021, and today we will be We will be providing some additional clarity that is consistent with this framework and reiterates our priorities around debt reduction and capital allocation over the long term. In the third quarter, we generated total cash flow of $398 million and free cash flow of $47 million. We reduced net debt by $217 million and maintained substantial liquidity of $3.1 billion. We are relentlessly driving down costs, and our track record of innovation really sets us apart. As of the end of the quarter, we achieved our goal of cutting more than $200 million in costs for 2020. Most of these savings will be durable, and we will also benefit from an additional $100 million of savings as legacy costs expire, bringing the total 2021 savings to $300 million. Our teams have done an incredible job of reducing well costs. We've improved on our already best-in-class operational performance. We have already achieved our target for a 20% reduction in drilling and completion cost. Greg will cover this in more detail, but these efficiencies are expected to stay with us through the cycle. Well performance has been strong, and we beat our third-quarter crude and condensate guide of 180,000 barrels per day. and we are confident that we will average 200,000 barrels a day in the fourth quarter and next year. In fact, we're already at 200,000 barrels a day here in October. Despite all the challenges that 2020 has thrown at us, we are set to achieve our third consecutive year of free cash flow generation. Our debt was down over $200 million in the third quarter and we expect a similar reduction in the fourth quarter. Our full-year capital budget is now expected to be just under $1.8 billion, which implies fourth-quarter capex of less than $400 million. Our full-year investments will be down $900 million compared to our budget. Our completion operations have resumed, and we have largely worked our way through the duck inventory that we built through the first half of the year. We expect to end the year with a typical number of ducks, approximately 30. Unit costs continue to trend lower. In the fourth quarter, we expect slightly lower per unit cost when compared to the third quarter, with our total cost projected at about $11.70 per BOE. One of our most impactful achievements is the cost cutting that came from every part of the company. We have achieved more than $200 million of cost savings in 2020, and next year we expect that to grow to $300 million. The value of our risk management practices has once again been clearly demonstrated. Our dynamic hedging program protected 2020 cash flow and enhanced margins through what has been an incredibly volatile commodity price environment. In the fourth quarter, we have hedges in place for 180,000 barrels a day of crude and condensate, or about 90% of our volumes. And we expect to see strong price realizations across all products. So now I'll turn the call over to Greg to cover our operational highlights.