With a combined revenue of $21 trillion and $2.1 trillion in profits, the 2026 Fortune 500 is the definitive list of America's largest companies.

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Almost $20 trillion in revenue—and a record-breaking $1.87 trillion in profits. Introducing the 2025 Fortune 500, the definitive list of the biggest companies in America.

Industries included in the sector are mining, oil and gas exploration and services, pipelines, refining, and utilities.

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The Fortune 500, in its 70th year in 2024, ranks the biggest U.S. companies by revenue.

The Fortune 500, in its 69th year in 2023, ranks the biggest U.S. companies by revenue.

This year’s Fortune 500 marks the 68th running of the list.

This year’s Fortune 500 marks the 67th running of the list.

Ovintiv, formerly known as Encana Corporation, is a North American energy and natural gas production and exploration company.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 66th running of the list.

After a corporate reorganization completed in January 2020, the energy company formerly known as Encana (and headquartered in Calgary, Alberta) is now Ovintiv, headquartered in Denver. It produces oil and natural gas from a range of land holdings in the U.S. and Canada.

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Formerly known as Encana, Ovintiv was incorporated in 2020. Together with its subsidiaries, Ovintiv explores, develops, produces, and markets natural gas, oil, and natural gas liquids in North America, primarily in West Texas' Permian Basin, Oklahoma's Anadarko Basin, and Canada's Montney Shale, where Ovintiv recently grew in a $2.4 billion deal with Canada's Paramount Resources.

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Ovintiv (OVV): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

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Ovintiv

ovintiv

Welcome to Aventiv's twenty twenty four Fourth Quarter and Year End Results Conference Call. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. For members of the media attending in a listen only mode today, you may quote statements made by any of the Aventura representatives.

However, members of the media who wish to quote others who are speaking on this call today, we advise you to contact those individuals directly to obtain their consent. Please be advised that this conference call may not be recorded or rebroadcast without the expressed consent of Ovintiv. I would now like to turn the conference over to Jason Burhaist from Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Mr. Burhaist.

Thanks, Joanna, and welcome, everyone, to our fourth quarter and year end '20 '20 '4 conference call. This call is being webcast and the slides are available on our website at ovintov.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 will now turn the call over to our President and CEO, Brendan McCracken.

Thanks, Jason. Good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining us. We are very pleased with our 2024 results, and we are very excited about 2025 and 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 fifteen years of premium inventory in the Permian, close to twenty 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, we're set to generate over $2,000,000,000 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 and 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 $2,300,000,000 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 $4,000,000,000 We generated free cash flow of approximately $1,700,000,000 up 50% year over year, of which more than $900,000,000 was returned directly to our shareholders.

We continued 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 $5,400,000,000 of net debt, a decrease of more than $320,000,000 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 averaging 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 $552,000,000 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 $450,000,000 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.

Thanks, Brandon. In 2025, we will continue to focus on maximizing the returns on our invested capital to increase our free cash flow, our shareholder returns and further reduce our debt. This means we are leveraging our multi basin portfolio and focusing 100% of our investment in our most oil and condensate rich areas. Each of these three areas is expected to generate program level after tax returns of approximately 65% to 75%. Although the value drivers for each asset are different, they all compete for capital within our portfolio.

We expect to generate about $2,100,000,000 of free cash flow in 2025, assuming commodity prices of $70 WTI and $4 NYMEX gas. This represents an increase of more than $300,000,000 year over year and a near doubling of free cash flow from 2023. Our 2025 free cash flow yield of approximately 18% and a cash return yield of 10% are very competitive in today's market across both industry peers and the broader economy. As a reminder, we expect to restart our share buyback program in the second quarter with first quarter free cash flow. Our enhanced capital efficiency will allow us to optimize our capital structure at a faster pace, decreasing our debt and reducing interest expense.

By year end, we expect our total debt to be well below $5,000,000,000 making significant progress towards our $4,000,000,000 total debt target. Even though we're investing in the most oil rich parts of our acreage, our production profile is about 50%

And as a result, we have significant torque to higher gas prices. We've been very intentional in moving our price exposure away from weaker pricing hubs like AECO and Waha to diversified downstream markets in The U. S. And Canada. We have done that both physically by acquiring firm transportation out of the basin and financially with basis hedges.

In 2025, about three quarters of our natural gas will price outside of AECO and Waha. This means we stand to benefit significantly from higher gas prices, even if AECO and Waha prices remain weak. This year, for every $0.5 move in Henry Hub gas prices, we expect to generate $225,000,000 more free cash flow. As a reminder, our price exposure gets even better in the fourth quarter with the commencement of our service on the Matterhorn pipeline in the Permian for 50,000,000 cubic feet per day. Access to premium resource is an essential component to generating durable returns.

We recognize this early and have done a lot of work over the last few years to identify opportunities to extend our inventory runway through organic appraisal and assessment efforts, bolt ons and acquisitions. As Brendan highlighted earlier, we've built an enviable premium inventory position across our portfolio. As a result, we can execute our business plan and generate superior returns for our shareholders for a long time to come. We remain very pleased with the value accretion we've realized from our Permian acquisition in 2023, and we expect the same from our recent Montney acquisition. At roughly $1,000,000 per well location, our Montney deal will deliver strong returns and compares favorably with many of the recent deals we've seen in the broader North American market.

We've been very intentional in building a high quality portfolio with deep inventory in each asset and in each product, and we have demonstrated that we are disciplined stewards of our shareholders' capital. I'll now turn the call over to Greg, who'll speak to our 2025 guidance and operational highlights.

Thanks, Corey. Maximizing capital efficiency and free cash flow remains a primary focus for our teams in 2025. As Corey mentioned, we are focusing 100% of our investment on oil and condensate, but we also have significant free cash flow upside to stronger gas prices. About 85% of our capital will be focused on our two anchor assets, the Permian and the Montney, supported by free cash flow from the Anadarko. Our 2025 program will deliver 205,000 barrels of oil and condensate per day and total production volumes of 595,000 to 615,000 BOE per day for about $2,200,000,000 of capital investment.

Our full year total production will be slightly lower than if both the Montney and Uinta transactions had closed on January 1. Additionally, we've elected to reject ethane in the Anadarko for the majority of the year and we now expect higher Canadian royalties. These items will also modestly affect our volumes. The decision to reject ethane supports our realizations and the higher royalties are due to higher gas prices. So the net result is free cash flow accretive.

We expect our first quarter production to average approximately 585,000 BOE per day, including about 202,000 barrels per day of oil and condensate. The production impact from the Montney and Uinta transaction close timing is roughly 3,000 barrels per day during the quarter. Oil and condensate production will stabilize in the second quarter and remain flat through the end of the year. Our capital spend will be highest in the first quarter, largely due to transaction close timing impacts, higher completions activity in the Permian and temporary drilling activity in the Montney that we inherited from the seller. Importantly, the capital efficiency of our 2025 development program is repeatable in 2026 and beyond, allowing us to sustain approximately 205,000 barrels per day of oil and condensate production with capital investment of about $2,200,000,000 Let's shift now to the asset level development programs.

In the Permian, capital efficiency and free cash generation remain the top priorities for our program as we work to drive efficiency in every aspect of our operations. Oventiv is consistently one of the highest productivity, lowest cost operators in the basin. Basin. We recently received third party recognition of our basin leadership from JPMorgan by being awarded the 2024 Order of Merit for Midland Basin performance. Our 2024 drilling speed averaged more than 2,000 feet per day and was roughly 18% faster than the 2023 program average.

On completions, our full year average completed feet per day was about 3,850. This was 20% faster than our 2023 program average. These cycle time improvements result in lower well costs. Our Pacesetter D and C cost is among the best in industry at less than $600 per foot. The 145 gross wells we brought online in 2024 continue to paint the type curve.

This type curve was unchanged across 2024 and it remains unchanged in 2025. This year, we started with five rigs and will drop to four at the end of the first quarter to bring on 130 to 140 net wells and hold oil and condensate production at roughly 120,000 barrels per day on average for the year. Our D and C cost is expected to average $600 to $650 per foot and is about $25 per foot lower than last year. Our Permian team expects to deliver consistent year over year well performance from a similar number of turn in lines for less capital. Moving north to the Montney.

We are very excited to have the new Paramount assets in our portfolio and we are working to integrate them into our business as safely and efficiently as possible. So far, the wells are performing very well as expected and we are looking forward to delivering our first Oventive end to end design wells later in the year. As a reminder, we plan to deliver well cost savings of more than $1,500,000 per well across the acquired assets by applying our industry leading data driven approach to drilling, completion and production operations. This approach continued to yield positive results in 2024 as we saw steady improvements in our daily average drilling and completion speed. The Montney has the lowest well cost in the portfolio.

And in 2025, we expect our D and C cost to average $525 per foot. This is about $25 per foot less than our 2024 well cost. Our twenty twenty five three to four rig program of 75 to 85 net turn in lines will see roughly a third of our activity in the newly acquired acreage with the remaining activity split between our legacy Pipestone and Cut Bank Ridge areas. The primary driver of value in the Montney is condensate production. And since there is a structural long term deficit in the Western Canadian market, it should continue to trade tightly to WTI for the foreseeable future.

In 2024, the average price realization for our Montney condensate was 95% of WTI. In 2025, with the addition of the new assets, we expect to produce about 70 more condensate or about 55,000 barrels per day in total for only 40% more capital. This makes us the second largest condensate producer in the play. As Corey mentioned, we are receiving much higher prices for our Montney gas than the AECO benchmark would imply. In 2024, our average Montney gas price realization was 164% of AECO or 76% of the NYMEX benchmark.

The underlying gas supply and demand fundamentals in Western Canada should continue to improve this year as LNG Canada comes online. Moving to the Anadarko. We continue to benefit from the strong free cash flow generation from the asset, in part due to its exceptionally low base decline rate at about 16% per year. This asset is unique in providing a stable, well priced stream of production with low operating cost and a minimal stay flat capital requirement. In 2024, the team continued to make significant progress in lowering well costs by focusing on drilling speed, maximizing lateral length, minimizing casing strings and maximizing the number of wells per pad.

They've taken nearly $100 per foot out of our average D and C costs and are set to deliver an average of about $550 per foot in 2025, a reduction of $100 per foot year over year. Our efforts in the play have not gone unnoticed as our Anadarko asset also recently received the 2024 order of merit from JPMorgan. We plan to run an average of 1.5 rigs in the play this year, delivering 25 to 35 wells. This will essentially hold our oil and condensate volumes at around 30,000 barrels per day on average for the year. I'll now turn the call back to Brendan.

Thanks, Greg. In closing, we continue to deliver outstanding results. We're focused on maximizing the profitability of our business, generating significant free cash and generating and maintaining our strong balance sheet. Our focus on building premium inventory depth, execution excellence, disciplined capital allocation and driving profitability have positioned our business to thrive on the road ahead. This concludes our prepared remarks.

Operator, we're now ready to open the line for questions.

Thank First question comes from Gabe Daoud at TD Cowen. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Hey, morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. Brendan, I was hoping if we could maybe first start with Montney versus Permian. You highlighted pretty attractive returns across the entire portfolio.

But from an A and D standpoint, given where acreage and location values are rising to in the Midland, would you say maybe your bias from here would be to add more in the Montney versus Permian if there was a need to add some more inventory?

Yes. Hey, good morning, Gabe. Thanks for the questions. I guess what I'd say at a high level, before maybe making a comment on the relative market in the two assets for acquisitions. What I'd say on a high level is it feels really hard to beat what we've done so far.

This has been a multiyear effort to assemble the portfolio and really I feel like what we're representing today is a new level of portfolio and inventory depth and quality for our investors. And we have a ton of confidence in that portfolio being able to generate the free cash flow that we pointed to for 2025 for a long time to come. And so it feels really difficult, I guess, you'd call it a high bar to beat that today. And so in general, our view is anything we would do would be coming from a position of strength and we're excited about what we've done over the last several years. In terms of the relative, I mean, you hit it.

There's just a massive arbitrage between the two. And at the same time, as we were able to do our transaction for right around $1,000,000 in undeveloped location, we've seen prints in the Permian for well north of that. So we think that's value to our shareholders that we're uniquely positioned to be able to create for them.

Thanks, Brendan. That's really helpful. Thanks for that color. And then I guess just as a follow-up, you mentioned on the slide the Permian and Montney oil powerhouse. So I guess a good question then off the back of that would just be how does Anadarko fit into the portfolio longer term?

Yes. And absolutely, if you look at where 85%, ninety % of our capital is going into the Permian and the Montney, so that is a big part of how we're running the business and prosecuting the strategy. And we've put ourselves in a place here. We've got close to fifteen years of premium oil inventory in the Permian, closer to twenty of oil inventory in the Montney and then over a decade in the Anadarko. And so we really like the role that the Anadarko is filling for us.

It's a really valuable asset. And what's really unique about it, and we've highlighted it a couple of times, but perhaps even underappreciated is the low decline nature of that play. And what that does is it supercharges the free cash that it's generating. So at a 16% base decline, that means we don't have to spend very much capital in there to level that asset out around the 30,000 barrel a day mark this year. It will start a little lower in Q1 and then build to that 30%.

But we're really excited about the role that the Anadarko is playing. I would also highlight that's a spot where our type curves are up year over year. And the team's done a great job of getting well costs down and type curves up, which boosts returns. And so whether we're running a rig in the Anadarko or a rig in the Permian or the Montney, they're delivering the same financial outcome for the business, which is very important from a capital allocation perspective.

Yes. No, for sure. It's good to see. Awesome. Thanks, Brendan.

Thank you. The next question comes from Doug Luggett at Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.

Hi. It's a McKinney Trust Plan for Doug Luggett this morning. He is unavailable at this particular time. My first question would be regarding your net debt target. You have a long term target of $4,000,000,000 that's produced by $323,000,000 for the past quarter.

I guess, what do you kind of project being your net debt target by end of twenty twenty five? If you can give me any color on that and how you get to that number?

Yes, absolutely. So I think what we've got in the material is we're going to get it well underneath the $5,000,000,000 mark by the end of this year. If you look at prices on the screen today, it would be in that 4.6, four point seven range by the end of the year, which we're really excited about because that now puts us within spitting distance to get into that 2020 or getting to that $4,000,000,000 target in 2026. So really excited about the trajectory they were on there. And we've pointed in the materials as well, we'll be resuming buybacks in the second quarter here following the pause off the back of the acquisition in the Montney and really excited that we've been able to kind of reduce that incremental debt that we took on with the acquisition very quickly and get back into the buyback market because we're excited about buying shares at this level.

Thank you. The next question comes from Arun Jayaram at JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Yes. Good morning. Brendan, you provided an updated inventory analysis across through your core basins, which points to well into double digits in terms of inventory depth on the oil side and beyond on the gas side. Brenton, what do you think this does for you from a strategic standpoint, just having that durable inventory position as we think about future A and D and just other opportunities as we look forward. Obviously, you highlighted maybe $2,000,000,000 of free cash flow, a little bit over that at Strip.

And maybe the potential for that to continue over time?

Yes. Arun, love the question. I think it really puts us into a new category here and that's what we're trying to impress is the confidence that on behalf of our shareholders we've built that inventory position and it gives us the confidence in that free cash generation and the durability of it, which is the important point that you're flagging. In addition to the inventory depth in quality, which we think is really enviable, we're also seeing lower capital in the business and lower cash costs, which means higher profitability and higher free cash that's coming with that. So it's really a combined effect of providing our shareholders the confidence in that inventory to be able to generate these returns durably and then just continuing to use our efficiency gains both on the capital and the cash cost side to just drive free cash flow over time.

And then like I say, we're getting a great cash flow per share boost with the buybacks and the value we're shifting to the equity holder by reducing debt. So it's really kind of an all of the above attack. And you also I think you hinted at or asked in your question there how that frames it up in terms of A and D thoughts. And I would just say that this makes an already high bar even higher given what we've been able to do with the portfolio.

Great to hear. Maybe my follow-up, if there's one incoming question we've gotten just on the regulatory macro picture is just maybe the impact of potential Trump tariffs on Canada. I was wondering if you've done some analysis on that and just provide some general thoughts, because I know it's a pretty complicated question, just given we don't have a ton of details here. But I was wondering, Brendan and Corey, if you could maybe help us frame the potential impact.

Yes, absolutely. Look, the steering we give you at this point, we anticipate a pretty modest impact to our business. And let me kind of dig in, describe it a little bit more. As you flag, there's still a fair bit of uncertainty about timing. Is there going to be any exceptions?

What are the magnitude of the impacts? And how are they going to be expressed in the market? And so what we've done is, as you might expect, sort of a ranging type scenario from sort of a more moderate tariff scenario to a more extreme tariff scenario. And even in the more extreme pictures that we can paint, there's a very modest impact to our cash flow in 2025. Maybe I'll just flag because it might be helpful for folks to understand the different places that we would see tariffs potentially impacting our business.

We'd expect to see something in the supply chain. We already have the steel and aluminum tariffs in place, so that largely shows up as an OCTG impact. And remember, here we source all of our OCTG domestically in The U. S, but there could be some bleed through to domestic prices because of the tariffs on international imports. So we've been proactive in purchasing and pricing a significant part of that 2025 supply chain already, but we don't anticipate that to

effect. On the gas side, of course, we export gas into Chicago and into The U. S. West Coast. And so there could be impacts there, which also could see some bleed through into the AECO and the DON markets.

Again, all of this conditional on are there reciprocal tariffs for the gas that Canada imports? There is a range. And then, of course, all of our condensate, we sell that domestically within Canada. And then finally, the sort of counterbalance point is around foreign exchange. And I would say the consensus view is that tariffs on Canadian imports into The U.

S. Would strengthen the U. S. Dollar relative to the Canadian dollar. And for our business, a lower Canadian dollar is favorable for free cash generation.

So you kind of put all those different categories together and our net net scenarios suggest pretty neutral in terms of an impact to our 2025 cash flows even in that more extreme tariff scenario picture that we can paint today. So watching it closely, clearly, there's a lot of dynamics, but don't anticipate it being a significant impact to '25 cash flows.

Thank you. The next question comes from Neal Dingmann at Truist Securities. Please go ahead.

Good morning, guys. Thanks for the time. Brend, my question maybe for you or Greg, just again, the op efficiencies are notable. I'm just wondering, when you look at your guidance expectations for this year, I'm just wondering, what are you all thinking sort of service cost versus continued operational efficiencies? It looks like you might have a benefit of both, but I'm just wondering how Greg or yourself are sort of viewing that for at least the remainder of this year?

Yes. Hey, Neil, absolutely. So I'm going to kick it to Greg. High level, we've got about a low single digit deflation built into the 2025 program, but the bulk of the gains are true efficiency gains. But I'll I'll kick it to Greg to maybe just highlight a few of the really key ones.

Yes. Thanks for the question, Neil. I mean, I'm just continue to be impressed with our teams and what they're able to accomplish. 2024 was the fastest year we've ever had in drilling and completion both in the Permian and in Canada. May be just a couple of stats.

I mean, 30 of the 35 fastest wells we've ever drilled in the Permian were drilled in 2024. So the team just continues to get significantly better and that's what's allowed us to continue to drop rig count. We're constantly trying to match up the right number of rigs with the right number of frac crews to be as efficient as possible and take white space off the calendar. Last year, we had six rigs running in the Permian ended up dropping to five late in the year. And then as I mentioned in my prepared remarks, we'll be dropping to four rigs here at the end of the first quarter.

And all that's really just trying to sync up the right amount of rig and frac activity. So that's really impressive, if you were to take the four rigs that we're planning on running for the majority of this year and pair that with one tribal frac crew, we could do 110 to 120 wells with that set up. So almost our full program with what we think today could be accomplished with four rigs and one triamal frac crew. With the efficiencies we continue to see, I wouldn't be surprised if that becomes the norm for us going forward. So just continue to be really proud of the teams and how fast they're going.

But of course then we believe strongly in level loaded programs and a balanced schedule. So as we get these efficiencies that bring more activity into the year, well then some of those savings will be reallocated towards the end of the year to continue that level loaded program. But just continue to see great performance and we think we're going to see even more here in 2025.

Great details. And then just one last thing, you guys have been busy on the M and A obviously with the Montney and all. I'm just wondering, Brandon, when you see sort of the modeling footprint now and your Permian footprint, is there still a fair amount of white space that you can fill in? Just wondering on smaller deals. Thank you.

Yes. Hey, Neil, you're a little muffled there, but I think your question was just on are we going to continue to try and fill in some white space in the Permian and the Montney on the map? And I just sort of wrapped yes, okay. Did I heard that right? Good.

Yes, I think the answer there is kind of similar to what I described before. It's we're taking a high bar and raising it even higher in terms of allocating capital towards acquisitions given the success we've had over the last several years and given the inventory depth and quality that we've created. So I think teams are going to be continuing to do a lot of work on swaps and coring up so that we can drill longer laterals on the footprint that we've already got. I would expect that to continue at a pace and but pretty disciplined around how we're thinking about go forward bolt ons and acquisitions. Thanks.

Thank you. The next question comes from Cauley Akermine at Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning guys. Maybe this question is for Corey. So we appreciate the free cash flow yield sensitivity at 18%. There is kind of a delta versus the Street. As you guys were putting that analysis together, where did you find street numbers to be insufficient?

Yes. I'll put that over to Corey Clay. Thanks.

Yes. I mean, we did take a little bit more time to highlight the leverage to natural gas. And I think if you go back even over the last year or two, we've talked a lot about our oil portfolio. So just reminding people of the significant natural gas exposure that we have. But what you've heard through the call and if you look at some of the actual results, we've had good, not just capital efficiency, but all of our various elements of cost, I think, have, outperformed.

So it's a bit of a combination depending on which analysis you look at, whether it's realized price or on the cost side. But I guess the short answer is probably multiple factors contributing to that outperformance on free cash flow.

And I did think I would just add, Kalais, sorry, Kalais, this is Brendan again. I would just add, overnight with the disclosure that we put out, the team did have some good conversations with a few of the analysts where there were some models that just had some bust in them, and we were able to get those cleaned up and match the free cash projections that we've put out there.

Sounds good. Kind of shifting over to the Montney here, looking at your GP and T expense, it's higher than peers in Basin. Can you kind of remind us why it's different? Is it related to ownership of G and P assets? And if so, would you ever consider bringing that fixed cost in house?

Yes. Hey, Clay. Yes, you've hit on it exactly. There's generally speaking in the Montney, a mixed bag of ownership of midstream and non ownership of midstream. And just the way our midstream has been built out over the decades, it is largely third party owned.

So our realizations on the cost side reflect that. And as far as looking at bringing things in house, I think we're always looking at every opportunity we can to enhance profitability, but we'd have to weigh that against the cost, of course, of that acquisition.

Thank you. The next question comes from Greta Jefke at Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Good morning and thank you for taking my question. Thinking about risk management through volatility, would you characterize a sufficient proportion of your production is covered with your current hedge book? Are you seeking to further reduce unhedged exposure either in your oil or gas portfolio from here? Thank you.

Hey, good morning, Greta. Absolutely. We've been running about a 25% hedge book and using largely three ways to put that risk management in place so that we can retain as much closure while creating a floor. And really how we think about it is we want to be able to withstand a long period, call it twelve months, of pretty low commodity prices, call it sort of the $40 on TI and $2 on NYMEX. And that's been the strategy we've been following while we've been de levering.

And what we've signaled all the way along, and this continues to be the case, is that as we could get that debt down, the need to have that hedge book can shrink even further. So I do think as we look out into 'twenty six, we'll continue to be following that hedge strategy. But then thereafter, we can continue to look to drag that down as we get the leverage back into the target range.

Great. And then also for my second question, the results from Trammel frac have been very compelling in 2024. With the 2025 outlook for about 75% of Permian operations utilizing Trammel frac, do you see much upside to that estimate in 2025 or 2026? Or would you consider 75% closer to the optimal proportion of operations?

Yes. I think we'll continue to see it inch up with time. That's been the sort of track record so far for the team. And I don't know, Greg, if you'd have any other comments there?

Yes. I think over time that will continue to come up. The only thing keeping us from doing all of our wells with Triangle Frac are just physical limitations on the ground. We have situations where you don't have six wells on a pad or you have six wells that are separated by a road or some other physical thing that prevents you from frac in all six of those at the same time. But we'll continue to inch that up.

We'll continue to be very happy with the results we're getting from Trammell frac. That's what's allowing us to rethink complete more feet per day than anybody in industry out there. And so we'll continue to work on that.

Ovintiv (OVV) Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

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