Ovintiv Inc. (DE)

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to OVENTIV's 2022 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. 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 to 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 Jason Verhest from Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Mr. Verhest.

Thanks, Michelle, and welcome everyone to our fourth quarter and year-end 2022 conference call. This call is being webcast and the slides are available on our website at OVINTIV.com. Please take note of the advisory regarding forward-looking statements at the beginning of our slides and in the disclosure documents filed on CDAR and EDGAR. Following prepared remarks will be available to take your questions. Please limit your time to one question and one follow-up. I will now turn the call over to our President and CEO, Brendan McCracken.

Good morning. Thank you for joining us. 2022 is a milestone year for Obentive. Our team generated a record-free cash flow of $2.3 billion and net earnings of $3.6 billion. This achievement was underpinned by our leading capital efficiency. We returned nearly $1 billion to our shareholders through our base dividend and share buybacks, and we reduced our long-term debt by $1.2 billion. We also expanded our future runway with the addition of approximately 450 new premium return locations. These additions were mostly in the Permian, and the acreage offsets are existing positions in Martin, Midland, Upton, and Howard counties. These inventory additions mean that we added more than twice the number of wells that we drilled last year. Our team successfully delivered 10% year-over-year capital efficiencies, which acted to offset significant inflationary pressures. Our team drilled and completed wells faster than ever before, and our cube development approach continued to deliver consistent well results while maximizing the value and returns from every acre we developed. The combination of these efforts delivered total annual production of 510,000 BOEs per day, while holding the line on our capital guidance of $1.8 billion. We also made significant gains elsewhere in our business. We were recently included in the Bloomberg Gender Equality Index, In addition, we made significant progress towards our GHG emissions reduction target. We've now reduced emissions intensity by more than 30%, and we are well on our way to meeting our goal of a 50% reduction. In short, in 2022, we delivered tremendous profitability, increased direct returns to our shareholders, bolstered our financial strength, extended our future inventory runway, and continued our strong social and emissions performance. These results demonstrate that our strategy is working and our execution is translating into increased value for our shareholders. We had a record-breaking year and I'm confident our team will continue to deliver leading capital efficiency and durable returns for our shareholders in 2023 and beyond. Our fourth quarter performance meant we ended the year with great momentum, with net earnings of $1.3 billion, adjusted EBITDA of $918 million, free cash flow of $537 million, and cash flow per share of $3.55, modestly ahead of consensus estimates. Our fourth quarter production came in at 524,000 BOEs per day. Strong well performance across our portfolio drove us to the top end of guidance on oil, gas, and NGL. This was despite extreme winter weather across North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Western Canada. Kudos to our team, where the weatherization efforts made by our experienced field staff kept our volumes flowing safely and reliably with minimal interruption. We also delivered approximately $250 million to our shareholders through share buybacks and base dividends. This will increase to $300 million in the first quarter as a result of the strong free cash flow we generated in Q4. We believe that long-term value creation in the EMP space will come from companies that can demonstrate durability in both their return on invested capital and their return of cash to shareholders. Generating durable returns requires a deep inventory of premium return drilling locations, disciplined capital allocation, and highly efficient conversion of resource to cash flow. We check all three boxes. Our capital efficiency is underpinned by our multi-basin multi-product portfolio. Our uniquely balanced portfolio provides operational and commodity diversification, cross-basin learnings, and premium inventory depth. Our ability to shift capital to maximize corporate returns is a competitive advantage. We did this in 2022 in response to the Montney permitting slowdown, which is now behind us. And we are making use of this option again in 2023 in response to weaker short-term North American natural gas fundamentals. In our business, access to premium resource is another essential component to generating durable returns. We are continuously evaluating opportunities to extend our runway through both organic appraisal and assessment efforts as well as through bolt-ons. Over the course of the year, we made significant additions to our premium inventory across our asset base. Through organic appraisal and more than 90 transactions, we cost-effectively added approximately 450 inventory locations. The biggest focus of this program was in the Permian, where we added about 8,000 net acres to our core positions in Midland, Martin, Upton, and Howard. The next biggest additions were condensate and oil locations in the Monty, All told, we replaced two times the number of wells we drilled last year. We're committed to staying disciplined and opportunistic in our bolt-on efforts, and only transacting when we can generate strong full-cycle return at mid-cycle pricing. Our inventory renewal efforts make our business more sustainable and help us extend our premium inventory runway across the portfolio. It's worth noting that these inventory ads did not result in incremental proved reserves. both because of the timing of the ads late in the year and the SEC booking rules. It's also worth pointing out that our U.S. oil reserves were flat year over year after accounting for the sale of our high-cost mature water flood in the Uinta Basin in the third quarter. I'll now turn the call over to Corey to discuss our 2023 outlook.