Ovintiv Inc. (DE)

Ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to OVINTA's 2021 fourth quarter and year-end results conference call. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. 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. 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 speaking on today's call, we advise you to contact those individuals directly to obtain their consent. Please be advised that this conference may not be recorded or rebroadcast without the expressed consent of OVINTIV. I would now like to turn the conference call over to Mr. Jason Verheest from Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Mr. Verheest.

Thank you, operator, and welcome, everyone, to our fourth quarter and year-end conference call. This call has been webcast, and the slides are available on our website at oventov.com. Please take note of the advisory regarding forward-looking statements at the end of our slides and in our disclosure documents filed on 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 will allow us to get to more of your questions today. And I'll turn the call over to Brendan.

Good morning. Thank you for joining us. 2021 was a momentous year for our company. I want to start by acknowledging the incredible work of our entire staff, whose teamwork, expertise, and dedication generated the results we'll discuss today. The global events of this week are a reminder of how critically important it is that our team continues to provide the world with responsible, affordable and reliable energy. Corey and Greg will be touching on multiple proof points throughout today's call on how our strategy to deliver superior returns is resulting in value creation for our shareholders. We are absolutely committed to this strategy. I believe we are the only peer who is set to maintain production and not increase capital year over year in 2022. As a result, we are set to deliver some truly eye popping cash return yields. We had a banner year in 2021. I'm confident our team will continue to deliver industry leading capital efficiency and value to our stakeholders in 2022 and beyond. Before we get into the details, I want to take a moment to cover some of today's key highlights. First and foremost, we are once again set to increase our base dividend. A 43% increase this quarter marks the second raise in the last six months and reaffirms the resilience of our business. We believe that a sustainable and growing dividend is a core component of our value proposition. Our efficiency gains and cost elimination are flowing through to increase shareholder returns. We continue to deliver on our cash return framework with additional buybacks underway in the first quarter of 2022. Since we started our buyback program in the fourth quarter, we have purchased approximately $4.3 million of our outstanding shares. Our incremental cash returns are set to double once we achieve our $3 billion net debt target, which we now expect to reach in the second half of this year. In addition to our financial and operational excellence, we continue to lead on the ESG front. We have set a new Scope 1 and 2 GHG emission reduction target of 50% by 2030. Finally, and importantly, we are reaffirming our previously announced 2022 capital and production plan. This 2022 outlook ranks number one amongst peers in capital efficiency, and for now allows us to deliver an 8% cash return yield, which spikes even higher once we hit our debt inflection point. We had a banner year in 2021 that's given us financial and operational momentum into 22. We achieved a number of key milestones in our pursuit of shareholder value creation. Our strategy is working, and the evidence speaks for itself in our achievements. The capital allocation framework we announced last fall delivered approximately $150 million to our shareholders in the fourth quarter alone through share buybacks and our base dividend. We also generated approximately $1.7 billion of full-year free cash flow alongside net earnings of $1.4 billion. We reduced debt by $2.3 billion year over year, and as a result, we are once again investment-grade rated. We also continued our focus on ESG stewardship. We knocked our methane reduction target out of the park and we achieved full alignment with the World Bank Zero Routine Flaring by 2030 initiative, a full nine years ahead of the World Bank's target. Finally, we more than offset inflationary pressures in 2021 and reduced our average well cost by 11% year over year. This performance was and continues to be differentiating versus peers. Combined, these 2021 proof points demonstrate the successful execution of our strategy. I'll now turn the call over to Corey.