Chevron Corporation (NYSE:CVX) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Page 13 of 13

Operator: Our last question comes from Biraj Borkhataria with RBC.

Biraj Borkhataria: Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. So the first one is on the share count. Just going back to early 2022 of the period where you’re stepping up the buyback program, but the dilution from the employee options are offsetting that rule. So I’m just trying to understand, I know you took a charge today in the corporate line. Do you expect 2023 dilution to be a similar level to 2022, or should it be lower? Just any sense on that would be helpful.

Pierre Breber: We expect fewer employee and retiree exercises of stock options. That was extraordinary unusual in the first quarter. And it’s a zero-sum game. In other words, if employees and retirees do it early, there’s fewer to do going forward. But that will be up to them and the stock price performance. And the share buybacks, I mean, you just divide it, depends on what our stock price is. We give guidance quarterly, and I think you can do the math. It is confusing the difference between average annual share count and where we end, right? So we are clearly taking our share count down. But when you look at average annuals, that’s exactly what it implies. It’s an annual each day, but the trend is going down. Our buybacks exceed the issuances and we expect that to continue.

Biraj Borkhataria: That’s very clear. And then second question is just thinking about asset sales. Looking at your guidance, 2023 plans are fairly muted. And I appreciate that you’re basically at close to zero debt, so you don’t actually need to do anything but in a high commodity price environment, maybe counter-cyclically, you might want to accelerate something. So is this a function of just the limited cleanup needed in the portfolio or a view on bid-ask spread or anything else, just to get your view on the asset sale market at the moment? Thank you.

Mike Wirth: Yeah. So Biraj, we are a little lower than what our typical level of guidance has been a level of activity. Over the last decade, we’ve generated about $35 billion in asset sales. So that’s, say, 3.5%. There was some portfolio cleanup underway there that was needed to be done, and we get good value as we sold those. You’re always looking at your tail. There’s always — when you sell things off, there’s a new part of your portfolio and say, okay, this sits at the margin. And so you’re always challenging that. If we were to find interested buyers and some of the things that might fit better for others than they do for us, we could transact on that. This is — the guidance that we’ve got right now and the things that are underway and in process is what we’ve put out there, and we’ll update you if there’s any changes to that.

Pierre Breber: And the only add, Biraj, we don’t do asset sales to raise cash or to manage the balance sheet. We do it based on what Mike just said, high grading of the portfolio where we can get the best returns for capital projects that can compete for capital, some of the impairments that we took in the fourth quarter are a result and outcome of projects that are good projects. They’re just not good enough to clear the bar. So it does ebb and flow a little bit as Mike has said, but I just want to be clear, we do it as part of our capital discipline and having driving higher returns and lower carbon. It’s an outcome of that. It ebbs and flows. It’s a little low this year. We set it to go back higher in future years.

Roderick Green: Thanks Biraj. I would like to thank everyone for your time today. We appreciate your interest in Chevron and everyone’s participation on today’s call. Please stay safe and healthy. Katie, back to you.

Operator: Thank you. This concludes Chevron’s fourth quarter 2022 earnings conference call. You may now disconnect.

Follow Chevron Corp (NYSE:CVX)

Page 13 of 13