Whitecap Resources Inc.

Good morning, my name is Sylvie and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Whitecap Resources Q2 2024 results conference call. Note that all lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. And if you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star then number two, I'm sorry, star then number one on your telephone keypad. And should you wish to withdraw your question, please press star then number two. I would now like to turn it over to Whitecap's President and CEO, Mr. Grant Fagerheim. You may begin, sir.

Thanks very much, Sylvie. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. There are four members of our management team here with me today. Our Senior Vice President and CFO, Ton Kang. Our Senior Vice President of Business Development and Information Technology, Dave Malmberg-Kett. Our Vice President of our West Division, Joy Wong. and our Vice President of our East Division, Chris Bullen. Before we get started today, I would like to remind everybody that the statements made by the company today during this call are subject to the same forward-looking disclaimer and advisory that we set forth in our news release issued yesterday afternoon. I am pleased to report that we had a very successful second quarter with record quarterly production averaging over 177,000 BUE per day, especially when compared to our forecast of 170,500 BUE per day. This generated $426 million of fund flow and $23 million of free fund flow. These results are directly attributed to the exceptional work of our exceptional technical teams. Our year-to-date operationally and asset performance-wise has been exceptional, resulting in production outperformance across our entire portfolio. In particular, our southeast Saskatchewan publisher assets, Our Central Alberta Cardium and Glauconide assets, as well as our unconventional Montney and Duvernay assets, all outperformed our internal expectations. Since acquiring XTO assets in August 2022, we have taken meaningful steps to develop our Montney and Duvernay assets, which has underpinned our strong operational performance in our unconventional assets. To date, we have designed and executed on a development plan across both our Montney and Duvernay assets, providing support confidence to the market in the deliverability of our asset base and our operational execution, designed, constructed, and brought on our Mosro battery on time and under budget, developed a long-range plan showcasing meaningful growth and depth of inventory within our Montney and DuVernay assets, and in particular, our next stage of Montney growth and development in our Latour area of Alberta. Subsequent to the end of the second quarter, we also announced a positive FID on our phase one new build Latour facility that is fully funded by PGI. This in addition to the partial working interest disposition of our Musrel and Kebab facilities to strong partners Topaz and PGI for total proceeds of $520 million. Through our extensive scale and depth of our high quality inventory, we've been able to secure additional pipeline and facility access, enhance contract terms and highly competitive fees on our processing, transportation, fractionation, and marketing for all areas of our Montane and Duvernay development. These synergies will enhance our future netbacks and reduce the overall financial impact of infrastructure working interest dispositions. We are very excited to move ahead with both partners and look forward to continued progression of our unconventional Montane and Duvernay development. I will now pass the phone on to Tom to discuss our second quarter financial results. Thanks, Grant.

Our second quarter financial results were equally as strong as our operational results, generating funds flow of $426 million, or 71 cents per share, and free funds flow of $223 million, or 37 cents per share. Our predominantly light oil and condensate production base benefited from crude oil prices averaging over $110 per barrel on a Canadian dollar basis, with total liquids representing 95% of our revenue for the quarter. Our operating costs decreased to $13.49 per BOE in the second quarter, a strong result for our team and reflect higher production and continued focus on cost savings. Cash tax expense of $100 million in the quarter included $33 million, or $0.05 per share, impact on capital gains from the partial infrastructure disposition. Excluding this one-time impact, the tax rate as a percentage of pre-tax funds flowed from six months ended was 12%, which is consistent with our forecast of between 12% to 14% for 2024. Year to date, we have returned almost $250 million to shareholders, including $25 million of share repurchases in July. We plan to use $200 million of the proceeds from the partial infrastructure dispositions towards share repurchases in the second half of the year. Proform of the dispositions, our net debt sits at below $900 million, And after share repurchases, we forecast net debt of below $1 billion at year end. This low level of debt relative to our projected $1.7 billion in fund flow provides us with capital allocation optionality going forward. I will now pass it off to Joey for remarks on our West Division results.