SM Energy Company

Good morning. My name is Rob, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the SM Energy's second quarter 2023 financial and operating results Q&A. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's brief remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, again, press the star one. Thank you. Jennifer Samuels, Vice President, Investor Relations and ESG Stewardship. You may begin your conference.

Thank you, Rob. Good morning, everyone. First off, I do apologize for any inconvenience yesterday for the delay in posting all of the quarterly materials. Our third-party web host had technical issues. I guess reporting on the busiest day can overload the system. We may reference those materials today, including the investor presentation and call transcript during today's Q&A call. Thank you for joining us this morning. To answer your questions today, we have our President and CEO, Herb Vogel, and CFO, Wade Purcell. Before we get started, I need to remind you that our discussion today may include forward-looking statements and discussion of non-GAAP measures. I direct you to slide two of the accompanying slide deck, page five of the accompanying earnings release and the risk factor section of our most recently filed 10k which describe risks associated with forward-looking statements that could cause actual results to differ we may also refer to non-gap measures please see the slide deck appendix and earnings release for definitions and reconciliations of non-gap measures to the most directly comparable gap measures and discussion of forward-looking non-gap measures Also, look for our second quarter 10-Q filed this morning. And with that, I will finally turn it over to Herb for a brief opening commentary. Herb?

Thank you, Jennifer. Good morning and thank you for joining us. Before we get started, I just wanted to reiterate a few key messages this quarter. Our return to capital program has been well received with the repurchase of 2.6 million shares in the quarter and 5.3 million since inception of the program last September. Including our sustainable dividend, we have returned $221 million to stockholders since September for a 6% yield over nine months based on the June 30th market cap. Execution was solid in the second quarter, building on a very solid first quarter. We're very pleased to have increased production guidance, reduced capex guidance, and geared up to add a rig in October that will help drive slightly higher oil growth in 2024. People who have followed us know that our ability to build inventory organically really differentiates SM. We've added 29,100 net acres this year to date in the Midland Basin, a 35% increase, and the team is excited with these latest 20,000 acres to target more dean potential, which today has been the producing interval in some of our very best wells in the Midland Basin. I've got to say, this is the best way to add true value to an E&P company. The first half of 2023 puts SM on a trajectory for an excellent year. With that, I'll turn it back to Rob to start taking your questions. Rob?