Ovintiv Inc. (DE)

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Aventis 2025 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 be broadcast without the express consent of OVINTIV. I would now like to turn the conference call over to Jason Verheist from Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Mr. Verheist.

Thanks, Joanna, and welcome, everyone, to our fourth quarter year-end 2025 conference call. This call is being webcast, and the slides are available on our website at oventa.com. Please take note of the advisory regarding forward-looking statements at the beginning of our slides and in the disclosure documents filed on EDGAR and CDAR+. Following prepared remarks, we will be available to take your questions. I'll now turn the call over to our president and CEO, Brendan McCracken.

Thanks, Jason. Good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining us. We are excited today to update the market on our latest results and the culmination of several years of strategic transformation at Ovento. With relentless focus and discipline, our team has remade our portfolio, reset our balance sheet, grown profitability, and built one of the deepest inventory positions in our industry. We have done all that while delivering superior returns on invested capital, both through the drill bits but also through smart transactions. All along, we've been guided by a very simple formula. Superior and durable returns will accrue to the company that builds a deep inventory in the best resource, creates a competitive execution advantage through its culture and expertise, and has the discipline to allocate capital to the highest returns and get those returns on a full cycle basis all the way to the bottom line. Year-to-date, in 2026, we have closed the NuVista acquisition and reached an agreement to sell our Anadarko assets. This means our portfolio transformation is complete, and it leaves us with a very focused and high-quality portfolio in two of the best plays in North America, the Permian and the Monk. Proceeds from the Anadarko sale will go to the balance sheet, marking the achievement of our debt target and right-sizing our capital structures. The enhanced resilience of the business means that we can return more cash to shareholders, and the new shareholder return framework that we unveiled today does just that. Several years ago, we made the strategic decision to focus our portfolio and build high-quality inventory depth in the Permian and the Monte. Approximately 80% of the remaining sub-$50 break-even oil locations in North America are located in those two basins. Bolstering our positions in these plays where we have competitive advantage means we can continue to deliver durable returns for many years to come. Since 2023, we've increased our Permian and Montney drilling inventory by more than 3,200 locations at an average cost of $1.4 million per net 10,000-foot location. And we did it without diluting our shareholders or stressing our balance sheets. This inventory life expansion has been unmatched by our peers and leaves us with one of the most valuable inventory positions in the industry. Our sequencing between inventory additions and debt reduction was carefully managed. We recognized the importance of reducing debt, and we balanced that objective with timely transactions that our team generated to put our shareholders into premium inventory for the right price. This greatly extended our premium inventory duration. We have now cleared both of these hurdles, and that represents a material de-risking event for our shareholders. As North American shale continues to mature, a very clear competitive advantage is emerging for companies like ours that have already set their inventory position up for success, have a clean balance sheet, and can access premium price markets and have a demonstrated track record that translates to leading-edge efficiency and returns. That combination of attributes is truly differentiated. Following the close of the Anadarko sale, which we expect will happen early in the second quarter, our net debt will be roughly $3.6 billion. This brings our leverage more in line with our peer group and opens the door for us to allocate a greater portion of our free cash flow to shareholder returns. The chart on the left of slide six details the sources and uses of cash to get us to the $3.6 billion. If you'll recall, we funded the NUVISTA acquisition with a balanced mix of cash and equity. The cash component was largely funded by a term loan. With the proceeds from the Anadarko sale, we plan to first pay out the term loan and our 2028 notes, and then allocate the rest to our credit facility and commercial paper balance. Our remaining long-term debt profile will have no maturities before 2030. We expect to realize $40 million of annualized interest savings from the repayment of the 2028 notes. This is in addition to the $25 million of annual savings we will realize from paying out our 2026 notes earlier this year. We remain committed to our investment-grade credit rating, and we expect the Anadarko sale and subsequent deleveraging to be credit positive. With the Anadarko sale set to close in early Q2, we are in a position to increase our shareholder returns. We continue to believe that our equity is significantly undervalued, and share buybacks continue to screen as an attractive return on investment. Our new framework will allow us to be more opportunistic in addressing this valuation discount. In 2026, under the revised framework, we will plan to return at least 75% of our free cash flows to shareholders. Longer term, we have set the expected range from 50 to 100%. This wider range is intended to allow flexibility to accommodate commodity price volatility and avoid pro-cyclical buybacks. To be clear, our 2026 buyback target will be based off our full year free cash flow, as we plan to make up for the pause that we had initially planned for this first quarter. We plan to commence buybacks immediately. In conjunction with our new framework, our Board of Directors has authorized a share buyback program totaling $3 billion. I'll now turn the call over to Corey to discuss our year-end results and 2026 guidance.