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Q4 2024 Ovintiv Inc Earnings Call

In This Article:

Participants

Jason Berheist; IR; Ovintiv Inc

Brendan McCracken; President, Chief Executive Officer, Director; Ovintiv Inc

Corey Code; Chief Financial Officer, Executive Vice President; Ovintiv Inc

Gregory Givens; Chief Operating Officer, Executive Vice President; Ovintiv Inc

Gabriel Daoud; Analyst; TD Cowen

Douglas George Blyth Leggate; Analyst; Wolfe Research

Arun Jayaram; Analyst; JPMorgan Chase & Co

Neal Dingmann; Analyst; Truist Securities, Inc.

Kaleinoheaokealaula Akamine; Analyst; BofA Securities

Greta Drefke; Analyst; Goldman Sachs

Dennis Fong; Analyst; CIBC World Markets

Presentation

Operator

Welcome to Ovintiv's 2024 fourth quarter and year results conference call. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. (Operator Instructions)
Please be advised that this conference call may not be recorded or be broadcast without the express consent of Oventive.
I would now extend the conference over to Jason Berheist from Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Mr. Burheist.

Jason Berheist

Thanks, Joanna, and welcome everyone to our fourth quarter and year-end '24 conference call. This call is being webcast and the slides are available on our website at oventive.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 SEDAR Plus
Following prepared remarks, we will be available to take your questions. I'll now turn the call over to our President CEO Brendan McCracken.

Brendan McCracken

Thanks, Jason. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining us. We are very pleased with our 2024 results, and we are very excited about 2025 in our future. Over the past several years, we have executed on our durable return strategy, and we begin this year with one of the most valuable premium inventory positions in our industry.
We combine that with our team's culture and expertise to convert resource to free cash very efficiently. We've built this position in a very shareholder-friendly way that sets us up to generate exceptional return on capital for a long time to come. We now have a more focused and more profitable portfolio with anchor positions in the Permian and Montney, the two largest remaining undeveloped oil resources in North America. These assets are complemented by our low cost, low decline, high free cash generating asset in the Anadarko Basin. Our work to build inventory depth over the past several years means we now have close to 15 years of premium inventory in the Permian, close to 20 years of premium oil inventory in the Montney, and over a decade in the Anadarko.
We are also seeing the benefits of our efficiency gains show up in our capital and cash costs. We're delivering oil type curves on a barrel per foot basis that are as good or better year-over-year in each of the three assets. Those efficiency gains are how we are holding our 2025 guidance at 205,000 barrels a day, completely making up the gap from selling 29,000 barrels a day in the Uinta and buying 25,000 barrels a day in the Montney. We believe our ability to continue to generate superior returns will be differentiating. With this inventory and our demonstrated execution excellence were set to generate over $2 billion of free cash flow this year, and we are confident we can continue to do this durably for years to come.
Our 2024 results show another year of execution excellence and delivery against our strategy. In short, we delivered tremendous profitability, enhanced our capital efficiency, bolstered our financial strength and high-graded our portfolio. These results demonstrate that our strategy is working our execution excellence is translating into increased value for our shareholders. We beat and reset our targets three times over the course of the year, enabling us to produce more of our products without investing more capital. Our initial guidance for 2024 had us delivering 205,000 barrels a day of oil and condensate for $2.3 billion.
We came in right at the capital guide but it came with an additional 6,000 barrels a day of oil and 25,000 MBoe per day of total production. Our full year free cash flow -- our full year cash flow was $4 billion. We generated free cash flow of approximately $1.7 billion, up 50% year-over-year of which more than $900 million was returned directly to our shareholders. We continue to lead the industry by delivering efficiency gains in each of our assets, completion design innovations record-setting execution performance, leading productivity per lateral foot and base decline management are a few of the areas contributing to our exceptional return on invested capital. In November, we high-graded our portfolio with the announcement of an oil-rich acquisition in the core of the Alberta Montney and the divestiture of our Uinta assets.
Both deals have since closed in addition to adding 900 high-quality Montney drilling locations, these transactions significantly enhance our capital efficiency and free cash generation, allowing us to pay down debt faster and increase returns to shareholders. Importantly, we also continued to make progress on debt reduction during the year, ending the year with $5.4 billion of net debt, a decrease of more than $320 million. Our strong execution in 2024 has set us up for continued success in 2025. Our strong operational performance during the fourth quarter delivered oil and condensate volumes averaged approximately 210,000 barrels per day, beating the high end of our guidance. The production beat was driven by the Permian and the Montney, where we continue to see strong well results and outperformance from our base volumes.
We did commence slightly below the low end of our guidance range on natural gas and NGLs due to a value-based decision to reject ethane in the Anadarko and some temporary winter weather impacts in the Montney. Our fourth quarter capital investment was approximately $552 million, in line with the midpoint of our guidance range. We also meet or beat per unit cost guidance on every item, continuing to build on our track record as an industry-leading operator. Our fourth quarter cash flow per share at $3.86 beat consensus estimates by about 7%, and our free cash flow totaled more than $450 million. All in all, another strong quarter, both operationally and financially, which allowed us to enter 2025 with significant momentum.
I'll now turn the call over to Corey to discuss our 2025 plan in more detail.