SM Energy Company

Greetings. Welcome to SM Energy's Third Quarter 2023 Financial and Operating Results Q&A. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone today would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you'd like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, It may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note this call is being recorded. At this time, I'll turn the conference over to Jennifer Martin-Samuels, Vice President, Investor Relations and ESG Stewardship. Jennifer, you may begin.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. We are speaking to you today from a particularly beautiful day in Colorado, land of prime time events. So let's get started on our event today. In today's call, we may reference the earnings release, IR presentation, or prepared remarks, all of which are posted to our website. 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 six of the accompanying earnings release, and the risk factors section of our most recently filed 10-K, which describe risks associated with forward-looking statements that could cause actual results to differ. Please see the slide deck appendix and earnings release for definitions and reconciliations of non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable comparable gap measures, and discussion of forward-looking non-gap measures. Also, look for our third quarter 10Q filed this morning. With that, I will turn it over to Herb for brief opening commentary. Herb?

Thank you, Jen. Good morning, and thank you for joining us. Let me start by reiterating a few key messages this quarter. Our return of capital program continues to be well-received. We have repurchased approximately 6% of shares based on shares outstanding as of September 2022. We've increased the dividend twice, most recently a 20% increase, while at the same time we have maintained net debt to adjusted EBITDA at 0.7 times and increased our midland acreage position by 35%. Execution has been outstanding in 2023, underscored by several third-party charts we presented in the slide deck, and we are excited to get out and demonstrate the value of our new assets with the fourth added rig in midland. As you can see, we have increased the number of expected fourth quarter completions in Midland from six to 11, and we'll have added benefit in the first quarter from the higher working interest in wells gained through the asset exchange that we just reported, setting up for a more oily first quarter and stronger oil trajectory in 2024. As we close 2023, SM Energy is very well positioned to deliver on a continuation of our core strategic objectives in 2024. With that, I'll turn it back to Rob to start taking your questions. Rob?