Southwestern Energy Company

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Southwestern Energy's first quarter 2022 earnings call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing star, then zero. Managers will open up the call for a question and answer session following prepared remarks. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on a touchstone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. In the interest of time, please limit yourself to two questions and read queue for additional questions. This call is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Brittany Rayford, Southwestern Energy's Director of Investor Relations. You may begin.

Thank you. Good morning and welcome to Southwestern Energy's first quarter 2022 earnings call. Joining me today are Bill Way, President and Chief Executive Officer, Clay Carroll, Chief Operating Officer, Carl Giesler, Chief Financial Officer, and Jason Kurtz, Head of Marketing and Transportation. Before we get started, I'd like to point out that many of the comments we make during this call are forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties affecting outcomes. Many of these are beyond our control and discussed in more detail in the risk factors and the forward-looking statement sections of our annual report and quarterly reports, and as filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Although we believe the expectations expressed are based on reasonable assumptions, they are not guarantees of future performance, and actual results on development may differ materially, and we are under no obligation to update them. We may also refer to some non-GAAP financial measures which help facilitate comparisons across periods and with peers. For any non-GAAP measures we use, a reconciliation to the nearest corresponding GAAP measure can be found in our earnings release available on our website. I will now turn the call over to Bill Way.

Thank you, Brittany. Good morning, everyone. We appreciate all of you joining us today. Southwestern Energy entered 2022 strategically advantaged with enhanced and increased scale in the two premier U.S. natural gas basins, a deepened and upgraded inventory, a strengthened financial profile and a de-risked business. We are sharply focused on generating increasing free cash flow by delivering the tangible benefits from our increased scale. And we did just that in the first quarter. We closed on our second Haynesville acquisition at year end, making this our first quarter of reporting results from our expanded and upgraded complimentary Haynesville and Appalachia portfolio. With operational integration complete, we delivered production at the high end of guidance, including outperformance in Haynesville. Thanks to strong operational execution and leveraging the company's technical excellence, our annual program is on track. As planned, we relocated two Swin-owned drilling rigs to Louisiana and are seeing encouraging early efficiency gains from those two rigs. I'm proud of how our teams have delivered while minimizing the impacts to our business from inflation and avoiding supply chain shortages. The strength of our operational performance was reflected in our strong financial results. In the first quarter, we generated more than $300 million of free cash flow, reduced debt, and lowered our leverage. Two emerging realities underscore the long-term resiliency of our business. The first trend is that, as recognized by the European Union and several major institutional investors, we believe natural gas is foundational to a low-carbon future, providing reliable and affordable energy. As part of our efforts to help bring about this future, we completed the certification of all of our Appalachia wells as responsibly sourced gas. And by the end of the year, we will be producing almost 5 billion cubic feet per day of certified RSG across both basins. We've also made further gains in progressing continuous emissions monitoring of our well pads across the entire portfolio. The second trend is that as recent global events have highlighted, U.S. natural gas is vital for global energy security. To help meet global supply, one-third of SWIN's natural gas is currently being sold to LNG exporters. Looking forward, we're differentially positioned to supply LNG facilities on a long-term basis. Our assets have unmatched proximity and accessibility to the liquefaction hub. In addition to being Hainesville's largest producer, 65% of our total production already reaches the Gulf Coast. We also offer reliability as a supply partner to LNG. We have more than 20 years of Hainesville inventory with flow assurance supported by our large and long-tenor firm transportation portfolio. From a financial reliability perspective, we've made progress toward the return turn to investment grade, as evidenced by our recent upgrade by S&P to BB+. Our improving financial strength is supported by the company's disciplined enterprise risk management practice. We maintain an active basis protection program through firm sales, financial basis hedges, and leveraging our advanced transportation capacity. In 2022, we have more than 90% of our gas production protected from Appalachia basis volatility. When coupled with our connectivity and proximity to the Gulf Coast markets, we have a differentiated ability to manage basis risk relative to our natural gas-focused peers. Given the constructive commodity price outlook and our improved financial strength, we expect to be able to hedge a lower end of our established ranges outlined in our hedging policy while protecting our capital and cost outlays. We continue to generate a growing level of free cash flow and are prioritizing further debt reduction in the near term. As we achieve our target leverage ratio and have a clear line of sight to our total target debt range, we would expect to be in a position to initiate a sustainable capital return program. That program will reflect both the durability of the company's expanding free cash flow capability and our continued commitment to long-term financial strength. Tune is well positioned to deliver on its strategic intent to generate resilient free cash flow through responsible natural gas development. We believe SWIN offers a differentiated opportunity to participate in value creation from the structurally constructive near and long-term outlook of the U.S. natural gas in general and for U.S. LNG export demand specifically. I'll now turn the call over to Clay to talk about our operations achievement.