Ovintiv Inc. (NYSE:OVV) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Brendan McCracken: Yes, Gabe, I think you had a question on the pro forma there, too. So yes, as Greg picked up earlier, we got about 60 to 70 Permian wells to bring on in the quarter. So it’s a fairly dynamic number, any given day here. But you’re right, we are running just a little over that 120,000 barrel a day at the moment.

Gabriel Daoud: Got it. Got it. Okay. Cool. Thanks, guys. That’s helpful. And then just a quick follow-up on the cost side, you highlighted some of the efficiencies driving savings and you have that $2.1 billion, $2.5 billion range out there for ’24. But curious, I guess, what’s embedded in that $2.1 billion. Is it, I guess, efficiencies continue to hold, could that number trend towards $2.1 billion? Or is there a little bit of expectations around some cost deflation continuing? Just curious if you could maybe talk a little bit more about what we need to see for that $2.1 billion number. Thanks, guys.

Brendan McCracken: Yes, Gabe, I appreciate it. I think the service cost environment is probably the bigger driver of the range there as we see it sitting here today. And again, what we’ve — we are telling the market here is that midpoint of the range feels like the right steering point with what we know. And we will just have to see where service prices trend. We’ve seen rig counts come off on both the gas and the oil side by about 15% from the peaks. And — if that continues, then that will keep driving further deflation and that could push us lower in the range. And we will just have to see, obviously, oil has ticked up a little bit, and gas has maybe been a bit stronger through the summer months. So we will see what that translates through to activities by the rest of industry. We’ve been clear about we are not adding activity, but we will see what happens across the rest of industry and tune our ’24 guide as we get closer to it.

Gabriel Daoud: Thanks, guys.

Brendan McCracken: Yes, thank you.

Operator: Your next question will come from Josh Silverstein at UBS. Please go ahead.

Joshua Silverstein: Yes. Thanks. Good morning, guys. Just thinking about the shareholder return profile versus the debt reduction you mentioned kind of up to 50% for the balance sheet portion of it. [Indiscernible] basically just have enough cash on hand to pay down the ’25 and ’26 maturities as they come up? Or do you actually want to build a little bit more cash than that to be opportunistic for other bolt-ons or anything else?

Brendan McCracken: Yes. I think, Josh, there what we will do is we will follow the program here, which calls for the at least to incremental shareholder return over and above the base dividend. And then the rest will be available for that debt reduction, which is we are trying to take the debt down to 4. And so I think we will be very opportunistic to do that as we go along. And think we were thoughtful about the capital structure to enable that without extra cost. And so like you said, we’ve got some well-timed maturities in the next couple of years to be able to do that.

Joshua Silverstein: Got it. And then I mean you guys do have a [technical difficulty] now, it seems like you have a pretty good well performance there. I was curious on the rail infrastructure that you guys had mentioned. Is this supporting potential basin growth for you guys, an increased capital allocation? Or is it really just [technical difficulty]? Thanks.